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REBEKAH CRAWFORD 



THE COMPLETE 

POETICAL WORKS 



Edgar Allan Pon 



WITH AVEAVOIR BY. 



eJ. H. INGRAA\ 



CHICAGO 

THE HENNEBERRY COMPANY 

554 Wabash Avenue 



PA) 



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CONTENTS, 



▲OB 

Memoir 5 

N. P. Willis on the Death of Poe 113 

POEMS AND essays: 

The Poetic Principle 12; 

Author's Preface to the Poems 153 

The Raven 1 5 5 

Lenore 1 61; 

Hymn 16.'^ 

A Valentine 163 

The Coliseum 1 64 

To Helen 166' 

To 16&; 

Ulalume i6gl 

The Bells 1 73 

The Enigma 176 

Annabel Lee 177 

To my Mother i79 

The Haunted Palace 1 79 

The Conqueror Worm 181 

ToF S S. O D 182 

To One in Paradise 182 

The Vallev of Unrest 1S3 

The City in the Sea i^4 

The Sleeper 186 

Silence 18S 

A Dream within a Dream 18S 

Dreamland i8g 

To Zante 191 

Eulalie 192 

Eldorado m 



CONTENTS. 



Israfel 193 

For Annie 195 

To 190 

Bridal Ballad 199 

To F 200 

Scenes from "Politian" 201 

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH. 

Sonnet — to Science 225 

Al Aaraaf 226 

To the River 240 

Tamerlane 240 

To 248 

A Dream 249 

Romance 249 

Fairy- Land 250 

The Lake— To 252 

Song 252 

To M. L. S 253 

Spirit of the Dead 254 

To Helen 355 

Alone ,,,.,,,,.,.,..,,.,*•. .255 



MEMOIR. 



Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, on 
the 19th of January, 1809. He was named 
Allan after a wealthy and intimate friend of 
the family, and when both his parents died his 
godfather, who, although long married, was 
childless, adopted the little orphan, then only 
six years old. Even at this early age Poe was 
noted for his precocity as well as for his 
beauty, and Mr. Allan appears to have been 
extremely proud of his youthful protege, and 
to have treated him in many respects as his 
own son. The boy is stated to have been 
made quite a show-child of by his adopted 
father; a tenacious memory and a musical ear, 
we are informed, enabling him to learn by 
rote, and declaim to the evening visitors 
assembled at Mr. Allan's house, the finest pas- 
sages of English poetry with great effect. 
*'The justness of his emphasis, and his evident 
appreciation of the poems he recited," we 
learn, made a striking impression upon his 
audience, "while every heart was won by the 
ingenuous simplicity and agreeable manner of 
the pretty little elocutionist. " Gratifying as 
these exibitions may have been to his god- 
father's vanity, the probable consequence of 
such a system of recurrmg excitements upon 
the boy's morbidly nervous organization could 
scarcely fail to be disastrous. Indeed, in after 
5 



6 MEMOIR. 

years, the poet bitterly bewailed the perniciotis 
effects of his childhood's misdirected aims. *'I 
am,'"* he but too truthfully declared, *'the 
descendant of a race whose imaginative and 
easily excitable temperament has at all times 
rendered them remarkable, and in my earliest 
infancy I gave evidence of having fully inher- 
ited the family character. As I advanced in 
years it was more strongly developed, becom- 
ing, for many reasons, a cause of serious dis- 
quietude to my friends, and of positive injury 
to myself; . . . my voice was a household 
law, and, at an age when few children have 
abandoned their leading strings, I was left to 
the guidance of my own will, and became, in 
all but name, the master of my own actions.'* 
In 1816, the Allans having to visit England 
on matters connected with the disposal of some 
property there, brought their adopted son with 
them, and after taking him on a tour through 
England and Scotland with them, left him at 
the Manor-House School in Church Street, 
Stoke-Newington. The school belonged to a 
Rev. Dr. Bransby, who is so quaintly described 
in ''William Wilson," one of Poe's finest sto- 
ries. At the time of Poe's residence the school 
grounds occupied a large area, but of late years 
they have been greatly circumscribed in extent. 
The description of the place, and the account 
of his life there, Poe is stated to have declared 
were autobiographically portrayed in this tale; 
if so, a portion of "William Wilson's," oft- 
quoted reminiscences must be relegated to the 
exaggerated memories of childhood. In some 



MEMOIR. 7 

respects the description of the * 'large, rambling 
Elizabethan house* ' corresponds more closely 
to the fine old manorial residence facing the 
school, but in others the place is described 
with almost pre-Raphaelite minuteness. The 
picture of Stoke-Newington as it was when 
Poe resided there is also unusually accurate in 
its details. Friendless and orphaned though 
he was, it was probably the happiest portion of 
his life that the future poet passed in this con- 
genial spot, this'* misty -looking village of Eng- 
land, where were a vast number of gigantic 
and gnarled trees, and where all the houses 
were excessively ancient." **In truth," adds 
Poe, **it was a dream-like and spirit- soothing 
place, that venerable old town, ' ' and it is not 
strange that the boy's plastic mind should have 
received, and retained indelibly imprinted 
upon it the impression of, and in after years 
recall, in fancy, *'the refreshing chillness of its 
deeply shadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance 
of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anew 
with undefinable delight, at the deep hollow 
note of the church-bell, breaking each hour 
with sudden and sullen roar, upon the still- 
ness of the dusky atmosphere in which the 
fretted Gothic steeple lay imbedded and 
asleep." 

Here, in this dreamy place, Edgar Poe spent 
from four to five years of his existence, and^ 
notwithstanding the monotony of school life, 
was doubtless fully justified in looking back 
upon the days passed in that venerable acad- 
emy with pleasurable f eelini^s. * * The teeming 



8 MEMOIR. 

brain of childhood," to quote his own words, 
•'requires no external world of incident to 
occupy or amuse it. . . . The morning's awak- 
ening, the nightly summons to bed, the con- 
nings, the recitations, the periodical half-holi- 
days and perambulations, the play-ground, 
with its broils, its pastimes, its intrigues; — 
these, by a mental sorcery long forgotten, 
were made to involve a wilderness of sensation, 
ii world of rich incident, a universe of varied 
emotion, of excitement, the most passionate 
and spirit-stirring. 'Oh, le bon teinps^ que ce 
Steele de ferf* " 

The house was, indeed still is, as Poe- 
described it, "old and irregular." *'The 
grounds," he continues, "were extensive, and 
a high and solid brick wall, topped with a bed 
of mortar and broken glass, encompassed the 
whole. This prison-like rampart formed the 
limit of our domain ; beyond it we saw but 
thrice a week — once every Saturday afternoon, 
when, attended by two ushers, we were per- 
mitted to take brief walks in a body through 
some of the neighboring fields, and twice dur- 
ing Sunday, when we were paraded in the same 
formal manner to the morning and evening 
services in the one church of the village. . . . 
At an angle of the ponderous wall frowned a 
more ponderous gate. It was riveted and 
studded with iron bolts, and surmounted with 
jagged iron spikes. ^Vhat impressions of deep 
awe did it inspire! . . . The extensive en- 
closure was irregular in form, having many 
capricious recesses. Of these, three or four of 



MEMOIR. 9 

the largest constituted the play-ground. It 
was level, and covered with fine, ha-rd gravel. 
I well remember it had no trees, nor benches, 
nor anything similar, within it. Ot course it 
was in the rear of the house. In front lay a 
small parterre, planted Avith box and other 
shrubs, but through this sacred division we 
passed only upon rare occasions indeed — such 
as a first advent to school, or final departure 
thence, or perhaps when a parent or friend 
having called for us we joyfully took our way 
home for the Christmas or Midsummer holi- 
days. ' ' 

*'The ardor, the enthusiasm, and the imper- 
iousness, " which is declared to have rendered 
the soi-disant "William Wilson'' a marked 
character amongst his school-mates, so that by 
slow but natural gradations he obtained an 
ascendency over all not greatly older than him- 
self, mr^y be safely assumed to represent Poe's 
own cnaracter, even at this early epoch of his 
life, as it is invariably found to represent it from 
first to last. Undoubtedly it was in this "ven- 
erable academy" that our poet acquired the 
groundwork of that curious superstructure of 
classic lore which in after years was one of the 
chief ornaments of his weird and wonderful 
works. To the lustrum of his life spent in 
England, Edgar Poe was probably far more 
scholastically indebted than the world can or 
will ever know, 

In 1821, the lad v/as recalled home, and 
soon afterward was placed by his adopted par- 
ents at an academy in Richmond, Virginia 

2 Poe's Poems. 



10 MEMOIR, 

Mr. Allan would seem to have been very 
proud of his handsome and precocious godson, 
and always to have been willing to afford him 
any amount of education procurable ; but of 
parental love, of that deep sympathy for which 
the poor orphan yearned, he seems to have 
been utterly devoid. Not but what the impe- 
rious little fellow was indulged in what money 
could purchase, but the petting and spoiling 
which he still appears to have received was not 
of that kind to touch his tender heart. 
Throughout life a morbid sensitiveness to 
affection was one of his most distinguishing 
traits, and this it was that frequently drove 
him to seek in the society of dumb creatures 
that love which was denied him, or which he 
sometimes believed denied him, by human 
beings. There is a paragraph in his terrible 
tale of **The Black Cat," which those who were 
intimately acquainted with Poe will at once 
recognize the autobiographical fidelity of. 
'*From my infancy," he remarks, *'I was noted 
for the docility and humanity of my disposi- 
tion. My tenderness of heart was even so 
conspicuous as to make me the jest ot my 
companions. I was especially fond of ani- 
mals, and was indulged by my parents with a 
great variety of pets. With these I spent 
most of my time and never was so happy as 
when feeding and caressing them. This pecu- 
liarity of character grew with my growth, and 
in ^ my manhood I derived from it one of my 
principal sources of pleasure. To those who 
have cherished an affection for a faithful and 



MEMOIR. 11 

sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble 
of explaining the nature or the intensity of 
the gratification thus derivable. There is 
something in the unsel-fish self-sacrificing 
love of a brute which goes directly to the heart 
of him who has had frequent occasion to test 
the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of 
mere man.** 

In her before quoted little book Mrs. Whit- 
man relates a well-authenticated and charac- 
teristic anecdote of Poe when he was studying 
at the Richmond academy, and whilst it very 
strikingly illustrates the almost Quixotic con- 
stancy of his attachments — his gratitude for 
kindness — it also but too clearly demonstrates 
how little sympathy and affection the young 
orphan received from his adopted parents. 
**He one day accompanied a schoolmate to his 
home,** relates Mrs. Whitman, ** where he saw 

for the first time Mrs. H S ;* the mother 

of his young friend. This lady, on entering 
the room, took his hand and spoke some gentle 
and gracious words of welcome which so pen- 
etrated the sensitive heart of the orphan boy 
as to deprive him of the power of speech, and 
for a time almost of consciousness itself. He 
returned home in a dream, with but one 
thought, one hope in life — to hear again the 
sweet and gracious words that had made the 
desolate world so beautiful to him, and filled 
his lonely heart with the oppression of a new 
joy. This lady afterward became the confi- 
dent of all his boyish sorrows, and hers was 

♦Mrs. Helen Stannard was the name of this lady. 



12 MEMOIR. 

the one redeeming influence that saved and 
guided him in the earlier days of his turbulent 
and passionate youth." But, alas for the poor 
lad, this lady was herself overwhelmed with 
fearful and peculiar sorrows, and at the very 
moment when her guiding voice was most 
needed, she died. But when she was entombed 
in the neighboring cemetery, her poor boyish 
admirer could not endure the thought of her 
lying there lonely and forsaken in her vaulted 
home, and for months after her decease, 
like his contemporary Petofi, the great Hun- 
garian poet, at the grave of his girl-love 
Etelka, Poe would go nightly to visit the tomb 
of his revered friend, and **when the nights 
were very dreary and cold, when the autumnal 
rains fell, and the winds wailed mournfully 
over the graves, he lingered longest and came 
away most regretfully. " 

For years, if not -for life, the memory of this 
unfortunate lady tinged all his fancies and 
filled his mind with saddening things. In a 
letter written within a twelve-month of his 
death to the truest friend, in all probability, of 
his "lonesome latter years," Poe broke though 
his usual reticence as to his early life, and con- 
fessed that his exquisite stanzas, "Helen, thy 
beauty is to me," were inspired by the mem- 
ory of this lady, by "the one idolatrous and 
purely ideal love" of his tempest-tossed boy- 
hood. In the earliest versions of his boy- 
hood's poems the name Helen frequently 
recurs, and it was undoubtedly to her that he 
inscribed "The Paean," a juvenile poem, 



MEMOIR. 13 

which he subsequently greatly improved both 
in rhythm and expression, and republished 
under the musical name of "Lenore. " The 
description which Poe afterward gave to a 
friend of the fantasies that haunted his brain 
during his desolate vigils in the cemetery, the 
nameless fears and indescribable phantasms, 

"Flapping from out their Condor wings 
Invisible Woe!" 

she compares to those which overwhelmed De 
Quincey at the burial of his sweet sister and 
playmate. We linger somewhat over this 
little-known epoch of Poe's story, because we 
are perfectly convinced that Mrs. Whitman has 
indeed found "a key to much that seems 
strange and abnormal in the poet's after life, 
in those solitary churchyard vigils with all 
their associated memories." There can in- 
deed be no doubt that those who would seek 
the clue to the psychological phenomena of his 
strange existence, that intellect— as Poe him- 
self said — which would try to reduce his * 'phan- 
tasm to the commonplace," must know and 
even study this phase of his being. The mind 
which could so steadfastly trace, step by step, 
the terrible stages of sentence after death, as 
Edgar Poe's does in his weird "Colloquy of 
Monos and Una," must, indeed, have been 
one that frequently had sought to wrest from 
the charnel-house its earthy secrets. 

Returning to the more commonplace records 
Of his history, the future poet is described to 
us at this period of his life as remarkable 



U MEMOIR, 

for his general cleverness, his feats of activity, 
his wayward temper, his extreme personal 
beauty, and his power of extemporaneous tale- 
telling, and, even at this early stage, as a 
great classical scholar, and as well versed iu 
mathematics, botany, and other branches of 
the natural sciences. It is but just that we 
should refer to Griswold's account of his epoch 
in the life of Edgar Poe, as that biographist's 
mendacity is not known to all. 

*'In 1822,** says Gr is wold, *^*Poe returned to 
the United States, and after passing a few 
months at an academy in Richmond, he en- 
tered the university at Charlottesville, where 
he led a very dissipated life; the manners 
which then prevailed there were extremely 
dissolute, and he was known as the wildest 
and most reckless student ot his class; . . . 
he would have graduated with the highest 
honors had not his gambling, intemperance, 
and other vices induced his expulsion from the 
university." The mere f«act that, according 
to Griswold's dates, Poe would only have been 
at this time in the eleventh or twelfth year of 
his age, is sufficient to induce doubt as to the 
correctness of his accusations, but, fortunately 
for the fair fame of the accused, indisputable 
evidence as to the entire untruth of Griswold's 
story has been procured. On May 22, i860. 
Dr. Stephen Maupin, president of the Univer- 
sity of Virginia, in answer to various inquiries 
made of him relative to Edgar Poe's career at 
Charlottesville, procured a statement from 
Mr. William Wertenbaker, secretary of the 



MEMOIR. 15 

Faculty, which he further indorsed with the 
remark that "Mr. Wertenbaker's statement is 
worthy of entire confidence." *'I may add," 
he continues, *'that there is nothing on the 
Faculty records to the prejudice of Mr. Poe. 
He appears to have been a successful student, 
having obtained distinctions in Latin and 
French at the closing examinations of 1826. 
He never graduated here, no provision for 
conferring degrees of any kind having been 
made at the time he was a student here." Dr. 
Maupin's letter is followed by the said state- 
ment, and a most interesting as well as con- 
clusive document it is. Says Mr. Werten- 
baker : 

"Edgar A. Poe was a student of the University of 
Virginia during the second session, which commenced 
February i, 1826, and terminated December 15th of the 
same year. He signed the matriculation book on the 
14th of February, and remained in good standing as a 
student till the session closed. He was born on the 19th 
of February, 1809, being a little under seventeen when 
he entered the institution. He belonged to the schools 
of ancient and modern languages, and as I was myself 
a member of the latter, I can testify that he was toler- 
ably regular in attendance, and a very successful stu- 
dent, having obtained distinction in it at the final exam- 
ination, the highest honor a student could then obtain, 
the present regulation in regard to degrees not having 
been at the timo adopted. On one occasion Professor 
Blatterman requested his Italian class to render into 
English verse a portion of the lesson in Tasso, assigned 
for the next lecture. Mr. Poe was the only one who 
complied vith the request. He was highly compli- 
mented by the Professor for his performance. 

"Although I had a passing acquaintance with Mr. Poe 
from an early period of the session, it was not until near 
its close that I had any social intercourse with him, 



16 MEMOIR. 

After spending an evening together at a private house, 
he invited me to his room. It was a cold night in De- 
cember, and his fire having gone nearly out, by the aid 
of some candle ends and the wreck of a table, he soon 
rekindled it, and by its comfortable blaze I spent a very 
pleasant hour with him. On this occasion he spoke 
with regret of the amount of money he had wasted, and 
the debts he had contracted. In a biographical sketch 
of Mr. Poe, I have seen it stated that he was at one 
time expelled from the university ; but that he after- 
ward returned and graduated with the highest honors. 
This is entirely a mistake. He spent but one session 
at the university, and at no time did he fall under the 
censure of the Faculty. He was not at that time ad- 
dicted to drinking, but had an ungovernable passion for 
card-playing. Mr. Poe was several years olaer than 
his biographer represents him. His age, 1 have no 
doubt, was correctly entered on the matriculation 
book." 

So much for the story started, or at all 
events promulgated by Griswold, of Edgar 
Foe's expulsion from the university. This 
writer admits that Poe was noted at this time 
for feats of hardihood, strength, and activity, 
and recounts— but with his u»sual exaggera- 
tion — an aquatic performance of the lad's. On 
a hot day of June, according to Poe's own 
statement, he swam from Ludlum's wharf to 
Warwick, r> distance of six miles, against a 
strong tide ; and when the truth of the asser- 
tion was publicly questioned, he obtained a 
certification of the fact from several compan- 
ions, including his dear classmate, Robert 
Stannard. This document, moreover, declares 
that *'Mr. Poe did not seem at all fatigued, 
and walked back to Richmond immediately 
after the feat, which was undertaken for a 



MEMOIR. 17 

wager." Our poet had, indeed, no little con- 
fidence in his swimming powers, and asserted 
that, on a favorable day, he believed he could 
swim the English Channel from Dover to 
Calais. 

In 1827, aroused by the heroic efforts the 
Greeks were making to throw off the yoke of 
their Turkish oppressors, and, doubtless, emu- 
lous of Byron, whose example had excited the 
chivalric boys of both continents, Edgar Poe 
and an acquaintance, Ebenezer Burling, deter- 
mined to start for Greece and offer their aid to 
the insurgents. Either Mr. Burling's heart 
failed, or parental authority was too strong for 
him, for he stayed at home, whilst the embryo 
-poet, doubtless in headstrong opposition to the 
wishes of his adopted parents, started alone 
for Europe. Poe was absent for more than a 
year, but the adventures of his journey have 
never been told ; he seems to have been very 
reticent upon the subject, and to have left un- 
contradicted the various stories invented, and 
even published during his lifetime, to account 
for the interregnum in his history. That he 
reached England is probable, but whether he 
ever beheld, save in his **mind's-eye," the 
remains of 

"The glory that was Greece 
And the grandeur that was Rome." 

is Still uncertain ; there are a few slight allus- 
ions scattered amid his writings to the scenery 
of both Greece and Italy, but it is impossible 
to found anything reliable upon such data. 



18 MEMOIR. 

The story as to his having arrived at St. Peters- 
burg, and got involved in difficulties that nec- 
essitated ministerial aid to extricate hi»m, must 
be given up, as must also that founded upon 
the suggestion made by the anonymous author 
of a scurrilous paper which appeared in the 
Southern Literary Messenger, that Poe, when 
in London, formed the acquaintance of Leigh 
Hunt and Theodore Hook, and lived like 
**that class of men . . . dragging out a preca- 
rious existence in garrets, doing drudgery 
work, writing for the great presses and for the 
reviews, whose world-wide celebrity has been 
the fruit of such men's labor. " 

In 1829 Edgar Poe returned home if Mr. 
Allan's residence may so be termed. He 
reached Richmond, Virginia, we have been 
informed, early in March, but too late to take 
a last farewell of his adopted mother, she 
having died on the 27th of February, and her 
funeral having taken place the very day before 
Poe's return. Mrs. Allan had probably exer- 
cised a conciliatory influence in the household, 
where, we hear, it was frequently needed, and 
the poor lad, who in after life invariably spoke 
well of this lady, doubtless soon felt the effects 
of her loss. Mr. Allan does not appear to have 
manifested any great pleasure at the prodigal's 
return, but when Poe expressed his willing- 
ness to devote himself to the military profes- 
sion,^ he exercised his influence and obtained a 
nomination for him to a scholarship in the 
military academy at West Point. As, accord- 
ing to the rules of that institution, appoint- 



MEMOIR. 19 

ments are not given to candidates after they 
have attained their twenty-first birthday, the 
young author, for such he now was, was only 
just in time to secure his nomination. Mean- 
while, Poe had published a little volume of 
poems, his first known essay in literature, 
under the title of *'A1 Aaraaf, Temerlane, and 
Other Poems." Lowell and others ot the 
poet's reviewers speak of an earlier edition of 
this book as published in 1827, and from it the 
delicate little lyric, "To Helen," is professedly 
extracted. This 1827 volume is also stated to 
have received very flattering notice from the 
veteran author, John Neal, but it has disap- 
peared without leaving any trace, and the 
edition ot 1829, which was printed for private 
circulation only, is the earliest discoverable 
vestige of Poe's literary powers. 

Reverting to the military academy, the 
records show that Poe was admitted into that 
institution as a cadet on the ist of July, 1830. 
He is declared to have entered upon his new 
mode of living with customary energy, but 
very speedily discovered how totally unsuited 
to him now was the strict discipline and mo- 
notonous training of such a place as West 
Point. The wayward and erratic course of 
existence to which he had been accustomed, 
together with his having been for so long a 
time sole master of his own actions, rendered 
it impossible for him to submit to the galling 
restraints of this institution. A fellow-cadet 
with him at the academy informs us of **his 
utter inefficiency and state of abstractedness 



20 MEMOIR. 

at that place. He could not, or would not, 
he remarks, "follow its mathematical require 
ments. His mind was off from the matter-of 
fact routine of the drill, which in such a case 
as his, seemed practical joking- on some ethe- 
real visionary expedition. He was marked," 
adds our informant, "for an early death." 
This institution was utterly unsuitable for 
one of Poe's temperament and experience ; it 
was a repetition of the old story of Pegasus at 
the plow, and the climax was, as could easily 
have been foreseen, that on the 7th of Jan- 
uary, 183 1, he was tried by a general court- 
martial "for various neglects of duty and diso- 
bedience of orders," to which he could but 
plead guilty, and, he was, on the subsequent 
6th of March, "dismissed the service of the 
United States. " 

In 1 83 1, whilst still cadet, and all unawed 
by the sentence impending, he published an 
enlarged collection of his boyish rhymes under 
the title of "Poems by Edgar A. Poe." This 
volume, garnished with a quotation from 
Rochefoucauld, ^'Tout le monde araison,** and 
which, like its predecessors, was for private 
circulation, was dedicated to "the United 
States Corps of Cadets," a dedication which 
appears to have drawn upon its unfortunate 
author the ridicule of his fellow-students. A 
fellow-cadet, a General Cullum, alluding to the 
contents of this little volume, says: "These 
verses were the source of great merriment 
with us boys, who considered the author 
cracked and the verses ridiculous doggerel." 



MEMOIR. 21 

Happily for literature, the opinion of **us boys*' 
did not carry much weight, and Poe continued 
to write * 'verses" quite regardless of West 
Point and its judgments. This little book is 
most interesting not only on account of its 
cleverly written prefatory letter of seventeen 

pages, addressed to a certain mythical *'B , 

but also from the fact that it contains a large 
quantity of verse suppressed in later editions 
of Poe's works. The prose is followed by a 
poetical introduction of sixty-six lines, a por- 
tion of which, under the title of ''Romance," 
is included in the general collection of 
*' Poems written in Youth." Many of the 
omitted portions of this volume have a strange 
biographical interest for those conversant with 
the true story of Edgar Poe's life; to them 
they hint of something more than mere 
rhymes. The omissions from it are as happy as 
the additions to those boyish poems. No re- 
gard for the relics of his youth withheld Edgar 
Poe in after life from pruning away the ex- 
crescences of his juvenile verse; the critic's 
unswerving hand clipped or molded all into 
artistic unity. 

Upon leaving West Point, Poe returned to 
Mr. Allan's residence at Richmond, and 
appears to have remained there some time on 
sufferance. Soon after his return home he be- 
came attached to Miss Royster, and was ulti- 
mately, it is believed, engaged to her. Mr. 
Allan, why it is not known, was violently 
opposed to the match, and without his pecuni- 
ary aid, matrimony was out of the question, as 



22 MEMOIR. 

Poe was entirely dependent upon him. A vio- 
lent quarrel took place between the old man 
and his adopted son, and Poe, unable to sub- 
mit calmly to the course of events, again left 
home, this time with the intention of proceed- 
ing to Poland, to expend his energies in aiding 
the Poles in their struggles against Russia. 
How far he got is not known, but it is sup- 
posed that he did not leave America, having 
been stopped by the intelligence that, on the 
6th of September, Warsaw had fallen, carry- 
ing with it the last hopes of the Polish insur- 
gents. In the meanvjhile, as if to widen the 
estrangement at home, Mr. Allan had taken 
unto himself a young wife— '* the beautiful 
Miss Paterson" whilst Miss Royster, forgetful 
of her faith, was married to a wealthy man, a 
Mr. Shelton. Once more aimless, and prob- 
ably resourceless, the chivalric young poet 
again sought his native province. Whether 
he returned to the home that was home no 
more is uncertain, but, from what is known of 
his proud spirit, it seems unlikely; if he did, 
however, his stay was of short duration, and 
his godfather's second wife having given birth 
to a son was the death-blow to Poe's prospects 
of succeeding to the property. 

Bankrupt in nearly everything, the unfortu- 
nate poet now turned to literature as a means 
of obtaining subsistence, but he found the 
waters of Helicon were anything but Pactolian. 
Where he wandered, and what he did, for 
nearly two years, still remains, an unraveled 
mystery, but it is alleged that some of his fin- 



MEMOIR. 23 

est Stories were written during this epoch, and, 
although accepted and published by magazine 
editors, were scarcely ever paid for. In 1833 
he is heard of in Baltimore competing for 
prizes offered by the proprietor of the Satur- 
day Visitor for the best prose story and the 
best poem. Here, then, was an opportunity 
of deferring, for a while at least, the starva- 
tion which was not far off. For the competi- 
tion, Poe selected and sent in six of his stories, 
and his poem of *'The Coliseum." Some 
well-known literary men consented to adjudi- 
ca.te upon the mass of papers received, and 
after a careful consideration of the various 
contributions, decided unanimously that Poe, 
who was unknown to them, was entitled to 
both premiums. 

Not contented with this award, the adjudi- 
cators even went out of their way to draw up 
and publish the following flattering critique on 
the merits of the writings submitted by Poe: — 

"Amongst the prose articles were many of various 
and distinguished merit, but the singular force and 
beauty of those sent by the author of 'the Tales of the 
Folio Club,' leave us no room for hesitation in that de- 
partment. We have accordingly awarded the premium 
to a tale entitled the 'MS. found in a bottle.' It would 
hardly be doing justice to the writer of this collection to 
say that the tale we have chosen is the best of the six 
offered by hirn. We cannot refrain from saying that the 
author owes it to his own reputation, as well as to the 
gratification of the community to publish the entire vol- 
ume ('Tales of the Folio Club*). These tales are emi- 
nently distinguished by a wild, vigorous, and poetical 



24 MEMOIR. 

imagination, a rich style, a fertile invention, and varied 

and curious learning. 

"John P. Kennedy, 
"J. H. B. Latrobe, and 
"James H. Miller." 

Griswold tells the story of the award thus: — 

"Such matters are usually disposed of in a very off- 
hand way. Committees to award literary prizes drink 
to the payer's health in good wines over unexamined 
MSS., which they submit to the discretion of publishers, 
with permission to use their names in such a way as to 
promote the publisher's advantage. So, perhaps, it 
would have been in this case, but that one of the com- 
mittee taking up a little book remarkably beautiful and 
distinct in calligraphy, was tempted to read several 
pages; and becoming interested, he summoned the 
attention of the company to the half-dozen compositions 
it contained. It wa unanimously decided that the 
prizes should be p d to 'the first of the geniuses who 
had written legibly.' Not another MS. was unfolded. 
Immediately the 'con dential envelope* was opened, 
and the successful competitor was found to bear the 
scarcely known name of Poe." 

The above report, which was published on 
the 1 2th of October, 1833, is of itself a com- 
plete disproof of Griswold 's dishonoring accu- 
sation against the committee of having awarded 
the prizes to Poe because of his beautiful hand- 
writing, without looking at a single MS. of 
any other competitor. When the story, it may 
be added, was brought to the notice of Mr. 
Latrobe and the honorable John P. Kennedy, 
the two surviving adjudicators, they at once 
denied its truth. 

Mr. Kennedy, the well-known author, was 
so interested in the successful but unknown 



MEMOIR. 25 

competitor, that he invited him to his house, 
and Poe's response, written in his usual 
beautiful and distinct caligrnphy, proves the 
depth of misery to which he had sunk. How 
his heart bled to pen these lines few can prob^ 
ably imagine : — 

''Your invitation to dinner has wounded me 
to the quick. I cannot come for reasons of 
the most humiliating nature — my personal 
appearance. You may imagine my mortifica- 
tion in making this disclosure to you, but it is 
necessary. ' ' 

Urged by the noblest feelings, Mr. Kennedy 
at once sought out the unfortunate youth, and 
found him, as he declares, almost starving. 
Poe's wretched condition inspired the unselfish 
author with pity, as his genius did with admi- 
ration, and from henceforth he became his 
firm friend. It is interesting to learn that to 
the last Poe retained his benefactor's friend- 
ship and respect, as Mr. Kennedy acknowl- 
edged when informed of the poet's decease; 
and no better disproof of the calumnies heaped 
by Griswold on the dead man's head could be 
given, than by repeating the testimonies of all 
those with whom Poe lived and labored. So 
far from contenting himself with mere cour- 
tesies, Mr. Kennedy assisted his new protega 
to re-establish himself in the outward garb of 
respectability, and in many respects treated 
him more like a dear relative than a chance 
acquaintance. In his diary he records, "I 
gave him clothing, free access to my table, and 
the use of a horse for exercise whenever he 



26 MEMOIR. 

chose ; in fact, brought him up from the very 
verge of despair. ' ' Aided by such a friend, 
Poe's affairs could not but mend. 

In the spring of 1834, Mr. Allan died, and if 
his god-son still retained any expectations of 
inheriting any portion of his wealth he was at 
last undeceived, as, in the language of Gris- 
wold, *'not a mill was bequeathed to Poe." 
In August of this same year, a Mr. White, an 
energetic and accomplished man, in opposition 
to the advice of his friends, commenced the 
publication of the Southern Literary Messen- 
ger, in Richmond, Virginia. This magazine 
was a very daring speculation at such a time 
and place, and but for a fortunate accident 
might have placed its promoter completely 
hors de combat Amongst the well-known writ- 
ers whose aid he solicited was Mr. Kennedy, 
and he, being fully engaged, advised Poe to 
send something. Our poet did so, and Mr. 
White, greatly pleased with his contributions, 
spoke of them in very flattering terms, in 
March, 1835, publishing ** Berenice. " Hence- 
forth Poe became a regular monthly contribu- 
tor to the Messenger. Mr. Kennedy had now 
had a year and a half's experience of Poe, 
without finding anything in his conduct to 
alter the good opinion he had formed of him, 
and the following letter is quoted by Griswold 
as having been written at this period by Mr. 
Kennedy to Mr. White. As it is apparently 
authentic, we quote it: — 

"Baltimore, April 13, 1835. 
"Dear Sir — Poe did right in referrin^j to me. He is 



MEMOIR. 27 

very devef with his pen-~classical and Bcholariike. He 
wants experience and direction, but I have no doubt he 
can be made very useful to you. And, poor fellow ! he 
is very poor. I told him to write something for every 
number of your magazine, and that you might find it to 
your advantage to give him some permanent employ. 
He has a volume of very bizarre tales in the hands of 

, in Philadelphia, who for a year past has been 

promising to publish them. This young fellow is highly 
imaginative, and a little given to the terrific. He is at 
work upon a tragedy, but I have turned him to drudg- 
ing upon whatever may make money, and I have no 
doubt you and he will find your account in each other," 

Mr. White undoubtedly found his * 'account" 
in his new contributor, and every month 
called the attention of his readers to the 
beauties of the current tale by the young 
author. 

In the June number of the magazine ap- 
peared Poe's tale of "Hans Pfaall," and three 
weeks later there appeared in the New York 
Sun, Mr. Locke's famous "Moon Hoax" story. 
Griswold alludes to the former being "in some 
respects very similar to Mr. Locke's celebrated 
account," in a way to make his readers be- 
lieve our poet the copier instead of the copied. 
Poe's reputation was now increasing so rapidly 
that Mr. White became desirous of retaining 
his services exclusively for his magazine, and 
having sounded his contributor, and found him 
only too willing, engaged him to assist in the 
editorial duties of the Messenger at a salary of 
about one hundred guineas (520 dollars) per 
annum. In consequence of this appointment 
Poe at once removed from Baltimore to Rich- 
mond, Virginia, where the magazine was pub- 



28 MEMOIR. 

lished. Griswold, in order to suit dates to one 
of his allegations against Poe, states that he 
was appointed editor of the Messenger in May, 
whereas he only became assistant editor in 
September, and did not assume the full control 
of the publication until December, 1835. The 
unfavorable notice of Mr. Laughton Osborne's 
''Confessions of a Poet," which appeared in 
the April number, and which Grisv/old, in 
order to support his charge of inconsistency, 
ascribed to Poe, was obviously never written 
by the poet at all. Its style is a sufficient dis- 
proof of the allegation. The following letter, 
which Poe wrote to his friend Kennedy to tell 
him of his appointment on the Messenger, 
affords a sad picture of the terrible melancholia 
under v/hich the poet so frequently suffered — 
an affliction not merely the result of privations 
and grief, but undoubtedly, to some extent, 
inherited: — 

"Richmond, September 11, 1835. 
"Dear Sir — I received a letter from Dr. Miller, in 
which he tells me you are in town. I hasten, therefore, 
to write you, and express by letter what I have always 
found it impossible to express orally— my deep sense of 
gratitude for your frequent and ineffectual assistance 
and kindness. Through your influence Mr. White has 
been induced to employ me in assisting him with the 
editorial duties of his magazine, at a salary of five hun- 
dred and twenty dollars per annum. The situation is 
agreeable to me for many reasons, but, alas ! it appears 
to me that nothing can give me pleasure or the slightest 
gratification. Excuse me, my dear sir, if in this letter 
you find much incoherency. My feelings at this moment 
are pitiable indeed. I am suffering under a depression 
of spirits such as I have never felt before. I have 
struggled in vain against the influence of this melan- 



memoir; ' 29 

choly ; you will believe me when I say that I am still 
miserable in spite of the great improvement in my cir- 
cumstances. I say you will believe me, and for this 
simple reason, that a man who is writing for effect does 
Dot write thus. My heart is open before you; if it be 
worth reading, read it. I am wretched and know not 
why. Console me — for you can. But let it be quickly, 
or it will be too late. Write me immediately ; convince 
me that it is worth one's while — that it is at all necessary 
to live, and you will prove yourself indeed my friend. 
Persuade me to do what is right. I do mean this. I 
do not mean that you should consider what I now write 
you a jest. Oh, pity me ! for I feel that my words are 
incoherent ; but I will recover myself. You will not fail 
to see that I am suffering under a depression of spirits 
which will ruin me should it be long continued. Write 
me then and quickly; urge me to do what is right. 
Your words will have more weight with me than the 
words of others, for you were my friend when no one 
else was. Fail not, as you value your peace of mind 
hereafter. E. A. Poe." 

To this wail of despair Mr. Kennedy sent the 
following kindly if commonplace reply : 

"I am sorry to see you in such a plight as your 
letter shows you in. It is strange that just at this time, 
when everybody is praising you, and when fortune is 
beginning to smile upon your hitherto wretched circum- 
stances, you should be invaded by these blue devils. It 
belongs, however, to your age and temper to be thus 
buffeted — but be assured, it only wants a little resolu- 
tion to master the adversary forever. You will doubt- 
less do well henceforth in literature, and add to your 
comforts, as well as to your reputation, which it gives 
me pleasure to assure you is everywhere rising in pop- 
ular esteem." 

Notwithstanding his ** blue devils," as Mr. 
Kennedy styled it, the new editor worked won- 
ders with the Messenger. '*His talents made 
that periodical quite brilliant while he was 



30 MEMOIR. 

connected with it," records this friend, and 
indeed in little more than a twelvemonth Poe 
raised its circulation from seven hundred to 
nearly five thousand. This success was par- 
tially due to the originality and fascination of 
Poe's stories, and partially ov/ing to the fear- 
lessness of his trenchant critiques. He could 
not be made, either by flattery or abuse, a re- 
specter of persons. In the December number of 
the Messenger he began that system of literary 
scarification— that crucial dissection of book- 
making mediocrities, which, whilst it created 
throughout the length and breadth of the 
States a terror of his powerful pen, at the same 
time raised up against him a host of implaca- 
ble, though unknown, enemies, who were only 
too glad, from that time, to seize upon and 
repeat any story, however improbable, to his 
discredit. Far better would it have been for 
his future welfare if, instead of affording con- 
temporary nonentities a chance of literary im- 
mortality by impaling them upon his pen's 
sharp point, he had devoted his whole time to 
the production of his wonderful stories, or still 
more wonderful poems. Why could he not 
have left the task of crushing or puffing the 
works of his Liliputian contemporaries to the 
ordinary "disappointed authors?" 

During the whole of 1836 Poe devoted his 
entire attention to the Messenger, producing 
tales, poems, essays, and reviews i«n profusion, 
indeed, apparently at Mr. White's suggestion, 
frittering away his genius over these last. 
Early in the year a gleam of hope seemed to 



MEMOIR. 81 

break in upon his checkered career. In Rich- 
mond, once more among his kindred, he met 
and married his cousin, Virginia, the daughter 
of his father's sister, Maria. Miss Clemm was 
but a girl in years, and already manifested 
symptoms of the family complaint, consump- 
tion, but, undeterred by this or by his slender 
income, the poor poet was married to his kins- 
woman, and, it must be confessed, in happier 
circumstances, a better helpmate could scarcely 
have been found for him, while the marriage 
had the further advantage of bringing him 
under the motherly care of his aunt, Mrs. 
Clemm. Until January, 1837, Poe continued 
the direction of the Messenger, when he left it 
for the more lucrative employment of assisting 
Professors Anthon, Hawks and Henry in the 
management of the New York Quarterly Re- 
view, and, probably, to aid the first in his clas- 
sical labors — a work for which his scholarly 
attainment rendered him invaluable. Mr. 
White parted with Poe very reluctantly, and 
in the number of the Messenger which con- 
tained the announcement of Poe's resignation, 
issued a note to the subscribers, wherein, after 
alluding to the ability with Which the retiring 
editor had conducted the magazine, he re- 
marked: "Mr. Poe, however, will continue to 
furnish its columns from time to time with the 
effusions of his vigorous and popular pen." 
We dwell upon this incident, and upon the 
fact, more than once acknowledged by Mr. 
White, that Poe resigned for other employ- 



32 MEMOIR. 

ment, because Griswold expressly declares 
that he was dismissed for drunkenness. 

From Richmod, Poe removed to New York, 
where he and his household resided in Carmine 
Street. In his writing for the New York 
Quarterly Review, says Mr. Powell, *'he came 
down pretty freely with his critical ax, and 
made many enemies." These reviews display 
his immense learning, and the extraordinary 
range of subjects with which he was convers- 
ant, but it is impossible to peruse them with- 
out grieving at the loss literature sustained by 
his dissipating his powers over such ephemera. 
The late Mr. William Gowans, the wealthy 
and respected, but eccentric bibliopolist, of 
New York, has left us a most interesting pictr 
lire of the poet's menage at this period of his 
story. Alkiding to the untruthfulness of the 
prevalent idea of Poe's character, the shrewd 
old man remarks, "I, therefore, will also show 
you my opinion of this gifted but unfortunate 
genius. It may be estimated as worth little, 
but it has this merit — it comes from an eye 
and ear witness; and this, it must be remem- 
bered, is the very highest of legal evidence. 
For eight months or more one house contained 
us, one table fed! During that time I saw 
much of him, and had an opportunity of con- 
versing with him often, and I must say that I 
never saw him the least affected with liquor, 
nor even descend to any known vice, while he 
was one of the most courteous gentlemanly, 
and intelligent companions I have met with 
during my journeyings and haltings through 



MEMOIR. 88 

divers divisions of the globe ; besides, he had 
an extra inducement to be a good man as well 
as a good husband, for he had a wife of match- 
less beauty and loveliness; her eyes could 
match that of any houri, and her face defy the 
genius of a Canova to imitate ; a temper and 
disposition of surpassing sweetness; besides, 
she seemed as much devoted to him and his 
every interest as a young mother is to her 
first born. . . . Poe had a remarkably pleas- 
ing and prepossessing countenance, what the 
ladies would call decidedly handsome." 

Through the courtesy of a correspondent we 
are permitted to extract the following addi- 
tional testimony from a private letter written 
by Mr. Thomas C. Latto, a friend of Mr. 
Gowans, on the 8th July, 1870. "In con- 
versation with William Gowans," says Mr. 
Latto, *'he told me that he was a boarder in 
the house of Mrs. Clemm. . . . Mr. Poe and 
his young wife, whom Mr. G. describes as 
fragile in constitution but of remarkable 
beauty, boarded at that time with Mrs. Clemm. 
They were in poor circumstances. Mr. 
Gowans lived with them several months, and 
he was often consulted by Mrs. Clemm as to 
the ways and means, as the boarding-house 
business did not pay. He only left when the 
household was broken up. Of course, Mr. 
Gowans had the best opportunity of seeing 
what kind of life the poet led. His testimony 
is, that he (Poe) was uniformly quiet, reticent, 
gentlemanly in demeanor, and during the 
whole period he lived there, not the slightest 

3 Poe's Poems 



34 MEMOIR. 

trace of intoxication or dissipation was dis- 
cernible in the illustrious inmate, who was at 
that time engaged in the composition of 
Arthur Gordon Pym. Poe kept good hours, 
and all his little wants were seen to both by- 
Mrs. Clemm and her daughter, who watched 
him as sedulously as if he had been a child. 
Mr. Gowans is himself a man of intelligence, 
and being a Scotchman, is by no means averse 
to 'a twa-handed crack,' but he felt himself 
kept at a distance somewhat by Poe's aristo- 
cratic reserve." 

"Mr. Gowans," remarks Mr. Latto, *'is 
known to be one of the most truthful and un- 
compromising of men." 

During January and February of this year 
(1837) Poe contributed the first portions of 
*'The Narrative ot Arthur Gordon Pym" to 
the Messenger, and encouraged by the interest 
it excited, he determined to complete it. It 
was not published in book form, however, until 
July of th© following year, and although it did 
not excite much attention in America, it was 
very successful in England. Griswold, dis- 
playing his usual animus, remarks, that copies 
being sent to England, and it "being mistaken 
at first for a narrative of real experiences, it 
was advertised to be reprinted, but a discovery 
of its character, I believe, prevented such a 
result. An attempt is made in it," he contin- 
ues, "by simplicity of style, minuteness of 
nautical descriptions, and circumstantiality of 
narration, to give it that air of truth which 
constitutes the principal attraction of Sir 



MEMOIR. 35 

Edward Seaward's narrative, and * Robinson 
Crusoe,' but it has none of the pleasing inter- 
est of these tales; it is as full of wonders as 
* Munchausen,' has as many atrocities as the 
*Book of Pirates,' and as liberal array of pain- 
ing and revolting horrors as ever was invented 
by Anne Radcliffe or George Walker." His 
further deprecatory remarks are not worth 
reproducing. The fact is that in a short in- 
terval the story was several times reprinted in 
England, and it did excite considerable notice; 
the "air of truth," which, it is suggested, 
was only in the attempt, having attracted 
much interest. 

The independence which Poe had hoped to 
earn by his pen was not obtainable in those 
days at New York, and having prospect of 
constant employment in Philadelphia, he re- 
moved to that city late in 1838, and entered 
into an arrangement to write for the Gentle- 
man's Magazine, a publication of some years* 
standing. His talents soon produced the usual 
brilliant effects upon this publication, and in 
May, 1839, he was appointed to the editorial 
management, "devoting to it," says Griswold, 
**for ten dollars a week, two hours every day, 
which left him abundant time for more im- 
portant labors." What leisure his editorial 
duties may have left was devoted to writing 
for other publications, and as several of his 
tales and other compositions first made their 
appearance at this time, it is to be presumed 
that he managed to obtain a fair livelihood. 
Still he was not only compelled to labor con- 



SG MEMOIR. 

tinuously and severely, but was frequently 
forced by the res angusta donti to forsake his 
legitimate province in literature, and turn his 
pen to any project that offered a certain remu- 
neration. There is a scandalous story told of 
him by Griswold in support of his wholesale 
denunciation of Poe as a plagiarist, and which, 
although the accuser does not state to what 
period of the poet's life it refers, really relates 
to this epoch. Griswold, on the authority, he 
asserts, of a Philadelphian newspaper, declares 
that Poe reprinted a popular work on conchol- 
ogy, written by the well-known naturalist, 
Captain Thomas Brown, as by himself, "and 
actually took out a copyright for the American 
edition of Captain Brown's v/ork, and omitting 
all mention of the English original, pretended . 
in the preface to have been under great obli- 
gations to several scientific gentlemen of this 
city." For ten years after Poe's death this 
vile calumny circulated unanswered wherever 
the poet's biography was told, and although 
many of the American literati must have 
known the untruth of the story, no one vent- 
ured to explain the facts until ultimately it 
came under the notice of the person of all 
others best able to disprove it, which he did 
through the columns of the Home Journal. 
Professor Wyatt, a Scotchman of considerable 
erudition and scientific attainments, formed 
Poe's acquaintance, and obtained his assistance 
in the compilation of several works on Natural 
History; among others was a "Manual of Con- 
chology/* and to this, Poe, whose scientific 



MEMOIR. 37 

knowledgfe was most comprenensive and 
exact, contributed so largely that the publish- 
ers were fully justified in using his popular 
name on the title-page, although he only 
received a share of the profits. Captain 
Brown's "Text- Book of Conchology, " necessa- 
rily bear.s some resemblance to the combined 
work of Poe and Wyatt, from the simple fact 
that both treatises are founded by the system 
laid down by Lamarck, but the absurd charge 
that one is therefore plagiarized from the other 
can only have arisen from gross ignorance or 
willful falsehood. About this time Poe also 
published, as a sequence of such studies, a 
translation and di-gest of Lemonnier's ''Nat- 
ural History," and other relative writings. 

In the autumn of 1839, Poe made a collec- 
tion of his best stories, and published them in 
two volumes as tales of the "Arabesque and 
Grotesque." This collection contained some 
of his most imaginative writing, and still fur- 
ther increased its author's reputation. It in- 
cluded the story of "The Fall of the House of 
Usher" — a story which contains the charac- 
teristic poem of "The Haunted Palace." 
Griswold avers that Poe was indebted to Long- 
fellow's "Beleaguered City" for his idea of 
this exquisite poem, but that Poe asserted 
Longfellow to have been indebted to him for 
the idea. We do not believe in plagiarisms, 
as a rule, and whether the author of "The 
Haunted Palace" did, or did not, accuse his 
brother bard of robbery we know not, but 
must simply point out that Poe's poem had 



38 MEMOIR. 

been published long prior to Longfellow's, 
and not "a few weeks," as Griswold says, and 
in two different publications. The resem- 
blance was probably purely accidental, but at 
all events, Tennyson had worked out the same 
idea many years previous to either in *'The 
Deserted House,'* published in i83o/'Ligeia/* 
Poe's favorite tale, also appeared in this col- 
lection. On a copy of this weird story, in our 
possession, is an indorsement by the poet to 
the effect that "Ligeia was also suggested by 
a dream;" the "also" referring to a poem sent 
to Mrs. Whitman, and which, he remarks to 
her, "contained all the events of a dream which 
occurred soon after I knew you." 

Towards the close of 1840, Mr. George R. 
Graham, owner of The Casket, acquired pos- 
session of the Gentleman's Magazine, and 
merging the two publications into one, began 
the new series as Graham's Magazine, a title 
which, it is believed, it still. retains. The new 
proprietor was only too willing to retain the 
services of the brilliant editor, and he found 
his reward in so doing — Edgar Poe, ass^isted by 
Mr. Graham's liberality to his contributors, in 
little more than tvvro years raising the number 
of subscribers to the magazine from five to 
fifty-two thousand. His daring critiques, his 
analytic essays, and his weird stories, follow- 
ing one another in rapid succession, startled 
the public into a knowledge of his power. He 
created new enemies, however, by the daunt- 
■Jess intrepidity with which he assailed the 
fragile reputations of the small book-makers. 



MEMOIR. 89 

especially by tthe publication of his papers on 
* 'Autography." He also excited much crit- 
icism in literary circles by the publicution of 
his papers on "Cryptology," in which he pro- 
mulgated the theory that human ingenuity 
could not construct .any cryptograph which 
human ingenuity could not decipher. Tested 
by several correspondents with difficult samples 
of their skill, the poet actually took the trouble 
to examine and solve them in triumphant 
proof of the truth of his theory. 

In April, 1841, he published in Graham's 
Magazine, tale of "The Murders in the Rue 
Morgue," the first of a series illustrating 
another analytic phase of his many-sided mind. 
This story was the first to introduce his name 
to the French public, being translated, and 
published as an original story by Le Commerce, 
under the title of "L'Orang-Otang;" shortly 
afterwards it was translated again, and 
appeared in the pages of La Quotidienne, 
whereupon a cry was raised, a lawsuit insti- 
tuted, and ultimately the truth discovered, that 
Edgar Poe, an American, was the author. 
Madam Mannier availed herself of the interest 
created by this inquiry to translate several of 
his stories for the French papers; whilst the 
Revue des Deux Mondes, Revue Francaise and 
other leading publications spoke in highly flat- 
tering terms of the young foreigner's produc- 
tions. This gave an impetus to his reputation 
in France, which culminated in the faithfully 
vraisemblant translations of Baudelaire, who, 
indeed, spent many years of his life in an 



40 MEMOIR. 

endeavor to thoroughly identify hi ) mird vith 
that of his idol Edgar Poe, and who has repro- 
duced many of his stories with but little loss 
of vigor or originality: indeed, to the efforts 
and genius of^Baudelaire is chiefly due the fact 
that Poe's tales have become standard classic 
works in France. Edgar Poe is veritably, it 
may be pointed out, the only American writer 
really well known and popular in France. In 
Spain, too, Poe's tales early acquired fame, and 
have now become thoroughly nationalized; 
and with the exception of works on Spanish 
subjects, such as those by Washington Irving, 
Prescott and Motley, are the only American 
works known in that country. In Germany, 
the poems and tales have been frequently 
translated, but it is only quite recently that 
they attained any widely-diffused celebrity 
amongst the Germans. 

In 1842, appeared *'The Descent into the 
Maelstrom," a tale that in many respects may 
be deemed one of his most marvelous and 
idiosyncratic. It is one of those tales which, 
like *'The Gold- Bug" and others, demonstrates 
the untenabilily of the theory first promulgated 
by Griswold, and since so frequently echoed 
by his copyists, that Poe's ingenuity in unrid- 
dling a mystery was only ingenious in appear- 
ance, as he himself had woven the webs he so 
dexterously unweaves. The tales cited, how- 
ever, prove the falseness of this portion of 
Griswold's systematic depreciation of Poe's 
o;enius. They are the secrets of nature which 
he unveils, and not the riddles of art: he did 



MEMOIR. 41 

not invent the natural truth that a cylindrical 
body, swimming in a vortex, offered more 
resistance to its suction, and was drawn in with 
greater difficulty than bodies of any other form 
of equal bulk, any more than he invented the 
mathematical ratio in which certain letters of 
the English alphabet recur in all documents of 
any length. He did not invent ''The Mystery 
of Marie Roget, " but he tore away the mys- 
teriousness and laid bare the truth of that 
strange story of real life. He did not invent, 
but he was the first to describe, if not to dis- 
cover, those peculiar idiosyncrasies of the 
human mind so wonderfully but so clearly 
di&played in "The Murders in the Rue 
Morgue," 'The Purloined Letter," "The 
Imp of the Perverse," and other remarkable 
proofs of his mastery over the mental strings 
and pulleys of our being. 

It was during his brilliant editorship of Gra- 
ham's Magazine that Poe discovered and first 
introduced to the American public the genius 
of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and it was 
whilst he held sw y over it that she contributed 
to its- pages man^ of her shorter poems; 
indeed, it was greatly due to Poe that her 
fame in America was coeval with if it did not 
somewhat precede that wo by her in her native 
land. In May, 1841, he contributed to the 
Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post — a paper 
belonging to Mr. Graham, and for which Poe 
wrote-^^hat prospective notice of the newly- 
commonced story of "Barnaby Rudge," which 
drew from Dickens a letter of admiring 

d Foe's Poems 



42 MEMOIR. 

acknowledgment. In this notice the poet with 
mathematical precision explained and foretold 
the exact plot of the as yet-unwritten story. 
Professor Wyatt, already alluded to in connec- 
tion with the conchology story, was not only a 
contributor of articles on natural history to 
Graham's, but at this time, and for several 
years, was intimately acquainted with Poe, and 
we have his unimpeachable authority for the 
invariable honor and purity of the poet's life 
In November, 1842, "The Mystery of Marie 
Roget" appeared, and about the same time Poe 
resigned his post of joint editor and reviewer 
of Graham's Magazine; why or wherefore was 
never stated, but that it was not through drunk- 
enness, as alleged by Griswold — the successor 
to Poe's editorial duties — Mr. Graham's own 
famous letter of 1850 conclusively proves. 
Poe's idea would appear to have been to start 
a magazine of his own, but his resignation may 
perhaps be justly ascribed to that constitutional 
restlessness which from time to time over- 
powered him, and drove him from place to place 
in a vain search after the Eldorado of his 
hopes. The truth as to his severance from 
Graham's, like so many of the details that 
enshroud and confuse his life's story, was 
probably purposely mystified by Poe, who had 
even a greater love than had Byron of mysti- 
fying the impertinent busy-bodies who wearied 
him for biographical information. It was 
shortly previous to this epoch in his life that 
he had the misfortune to make the acquaint- 
ance of Rufus Griswold, a man who, although 



MEMOIR. 43 

several years Poe's junior in age, had, by many 
years' "knocking about the world," gained an 
experience of its shifts and subterfuges and 
made him far more than a match for the 
unworldly nature of our poet. According to 
the author of the ''Memoir," his acquaintance 
with Poe began in the spring of 1841, by the 
poet calling at his hotel and leaving two letters 
of introduction. "The next morning," he 
says, "I visited him, and we had a long con- 
versation about literature and literary men, 
pertinent to the subject of a book, 'The Poets 
and Poetry of America,' which I was then 
preparing for the press," and he follows up 
this introductory interview with the quotation 
of several letters purporting to have been 
written by Poe, not one of which we shall refer 
to or make use of, as there is pretty positive 
proof that some, if not the whole of them, are 
fabrications! The enmity of Griswold for 
Poe— "the long, intense, and implacable 
enmity," alluded to by John Neal and Mr. 
Graham — is so palpable to readers of the 
"Memoir," that it needed not the outside evi- 
dence which has been so abundantly furnished 
us to prove it, and the wonder is, not so much 
that the biographer's audacious falsifications 
should have obtained credit abroad, as that no 
American should have produced as complete a 
refutation of them as could and should have 
been given years ago. Apart from deadly 
enmity, aroused by a subject of a domestic 
nature, the compiler could not forgive Poe for 
exposing his literary shortcomings. The only 



44 MEMOIR. 

passage in which the soi-dtsani biographer 
appears to relent towards the dead poet is that 
in which he alludes to his own visit to Poe's 
residence in Philadelphia. '*It was while he 
resided in Philadelphia," Griswold remarks, 
"that I became acquainted with him. His 
manner was very quiet and gentlemanly; he 
was usually dressed with simplicity and ele- 
gance, and when once he sent for me to visit 
him, during a period of illness caused by pro- 
tracted and anxious watching at the side of his 
sick wife, I was impressed by the singular neat- 
ness and the air of refinement in his home. 
It was in a smr.ll house in one of the pleasant 
and silent neighborhoods far from the town, 
and, though slightljr and cheaply furnished, 
everything in it was so tastefully and fitly dis- 
posed that it seemed altogether suitable for a 
man of genius. " On seceding from Graham's, 
Poe seems to have endeavored to start a mag- 
azine of his own, to be entitled The Stylus, and 
Mr. Thomas C. Clark, of Philadelphia, was to 
have been the publisher. The poet does not 
appear to have been enabled to obtain a suffi- 
cient number of subscribers to start the pro- 
jected publication on a sound basis, and there- 
fore the scheme fell through. Mr. Clark, who 
is still residing in Philadelphia, speaks in high 
terms of Poe's probity and honor, as indeed 
does every one, save Griswold, who had deal- 
ings with him. It is much to be regretted 
that circumstances have prevented Mr. Clark 
giving to the world his reminiscences and 001° 
lected facts relating to Edgar Poe. 



MEMOIR. 45 

In the spring of 1843 the one hundred dollai 
prize, offered by The Dollar Magazine, was 
obtained by Poe for his tale of "The Gold- 
Bug," a tale illustrative of and originating 
with his theory of ciphers. As usual, Gris- 
wold, in mentioning it, cannot refrain from 
displaying the cloven hoof, and, knowing it to 
be the most popular of Poe's stories in Amer- 
ica, refers to it "as one of the most remarkable 
illustrations of his ingenuity of construction and 
apparent subtlety of reasoning. " During this 
year Poe wrote for Lowell's Pioneer, and other 
publications. In 1844 he removed to New York, 
whither his daily increasing fame had alread)'' 
preceded him, and where he entered into a 
more congenial literary atmosphere than that 
in which he had recently resided. In the cities 
in which he had hitherto exercised his talents 
he was continually treading upon the mental 
corns of provincial cliques, but in New York, 
as he now entered it, he found a neare 
approach to metropolitanism, and therefore a 
fairer field for the recognition of his powers. 
"For the first time," remarks Griswold, com- 
pletely ignoring the talent of all other American 
cities, "for the first time he was received into 
circles capable of both the appreciation and 
the production of literature. ' ' It has generally 
been assumed that the first publication he 
wrote for in New York was the Daily Mirror, 
but the author of a sketch of Willis and his 
contemporaries contributed to the Northern 
Monthly in 1868, referring to Poe as "one who 
has been more shamefully maligned and slan- 



46 MEMOIR. 

dered than any other writer that can be 
named/' states, "I say this from personal 
knowledge of Mr. Poe, who was associated with 
myself in the editorial conduct of my own 
paper before his introduction into the office of 
Messrs. Willis and Morris;" adding, *'for Mr. 
Willis's manly vindication of Poe from his 
biographer's degrading accusations," he says, 
*'Mr. Willis's testimony is freely confirmed by 
other publishers. On this subject I have some 
singular revelations which throw a strong light 
on the causes that darkened the life, and made 
most unhappy the death, of one of the most 
remarkable of all our literary men — as an Eng- 
lish reviewer once said 'the most brilliant gen- 
ius of his country.' " 

Toward the autumn of the year Poe sought 
and found employment as sub-editor and 
critic on the Mirror, a daily paper belonging 
to N. P. Willis and General George Morris. 

In a letter written by Willis from Idlewild, 
in October, 1859, to his brother poet and for- 
mer copartner Morris, he thus alludes to Poe's 
engagement with him: — "Poe came to us 
quite incidentally, neither of us having been 
personally acquainted with him till that time; 
and his position towards us, and connection 
with us, of course unaffected by claims of pre- 
vious friendship, were a fair average of his 
general intercourse and impressions. As he 
was a man who never smiled and never said a 
propitiatory or deprecating word, we were not 
likely to have been seized with any sudden 
nartialitv or wayward caprice in his favor. . . . 



MEMOIR. 47 

It was rather a step downward, after being the 
chief editor of several monthlies, as Poe had 
been, to come into the office of a daily journal 
as a mechanical paragraphist. It was his bus- 
iness to sit at a desk, in a corner of the edi- 
torial room, ready to be called upon for any of 
the miscellaneous work of the day; yet you re- 
member how absolutely and how good-humored 
ly ready he was for any suggestion ;how punctu- 
ally and industriously reliable in the following 
out of the wish once expressed ; how cheerful 
and present-minded his work when he might 
excusably have been so listless and abstracted. 
We loved the man for the entireness of the 
fidelity with which he served us. When he 
left us, we were very reluctant to part with 
him; but we could not object— he was to take 
the lead in another periodical." 

During the six months or so that Poe was 
engaged on the Mirror — the whole of which 
time Willis asserts "he was invariably punc- 
tual and industrious," and was daily "at his 
desk in the office from nine in the morning till 
the evening paper went to press"— during this 
time some of the most remarkable productions 
of his genius, including his poetic chef-cTceuvre 
of "The Raven," were given to the world. 
This unique and most original of poems first 
appeared in Colton's American Review for 
February, 1845, as by "Quarles." It was at 
once reprinted in the Evening Mirror, and in 
a few weeks had spread over the whole of the 
United States, calling into existence parodies 
and imitations innumerable. Mrs. Whitman 



48 MEMOIR. 

informs us that, when *'The Raven/* appeared, 
Poe one evening electrified the gay company 
assembled at a weekly reunion of noted artists 
and men of letters, held at the residence of an 
accomplished poetess in Waverley Place, by the 
recitation, at the request of his hostess, of this 
wonderful poem. After this, it was of course 
impossible to keep the authorship secret. 
Willis reprinted the poem with the author's 
name attached, remarking that, in his opinion, 
**it was the most effective single example of 
fugitive poetry ever published in this country, 
and is unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle 
conception, masterly ingenuity of versifica- 
tion, and consistent sustaining of imaginative 
lift." It carried its author's name and fame 
from shore to shore ; drew admiring testimony 
from some of the first of English poets, and 
finally made him the lion of the season. And 
for this masterpiece of genius — this poem 
which has probably done more for the renown 
of American letters than any other single work 
— it is alleged that Poe, then at the height of 
his renown, received the sum of ten dollars, 
that is, about two pounds ; 

In the February number of Graham's Maga- 
zine for this same year appeared a biographi- 
cal and critical sketch of Edgar Poe by James 
Russell Lowell. In many respects we deem it 
the best critique on his genius that we have 
yet seen, and although the estimate formed of 
Poe's poetic precocity may not be perfectly 
just, it is difficult to find fault with the admir- 
able analyzation of his prose writings. It is 



MEMOIR 49 

somewhat singular, however, that in the col- 
lection of Poe's works edited by Griswold, Mr. 
Lowell should permit the continual reprinting 
of this critique **with a few alterations and 
omissions," when those very omissions 
serve to give color to one of Griswold's vilest 
charges, that of the alleged theft of Captain 
Brown's Conchology book. In the beginning 
of this year the Broadway Journal was started, 
and in March Poe was associated with two 
journalists in its management. He had writ- 
ten for it from the first, but had nothing to do 
with the editorial arrangement until the tenth 
number. One of the most noticeable of his 
contributions was a critique on the poems of 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, to whom he 
shortly afterwards dedicated, in most admiring 
terms, a selection of his poems, published by 
Messrs. Wiley & Putman, under the title "The 
Raven and Other Poems." About the same 
time the same firm published a selection from 
his prose compositions as "Tales," and another 
firm reprinted his "Tales of the Grotesque and 
Picturesque," so that his name was kept well 
before the public. 

Several of the stories were nov/ published in 
an English collection, as was also **The 
Raven. ' ' Mrs. Browning, in a private letter 
written a few weeks after the publication of 
the poem, says:— "This vivid writing — this 
power which is felt — has produced a sensation 
here in England. Some of my friends are 
taken by the fear of it, and some by the music. 
I hear of persons who are haunted by the 



50 MEMOIR. 

*Never more,* and an acquaintance of mine 
who has the misfortune of possessing a bust of 
Pallas cannot bear to look at it in the twilight. " 
And then alluding to Poe's story of '^Mesmeric 
Revelations," which some English journals 
accepted as a faithful record of facts, the 
Poetess resumes: — " Then there is a tale going 
the rounds of the newspapers about mesmer- 
ism, which is throwing us all into 'most 
admired disorder' — dreadful doubts as to 
whether it can be true, as the children say of 
ghost stories. The certain thing about it is 
the power of the writer. " 

By this time Edgar Poe had become person- 
ally known to and admired by a large number 
of the literati of New York, *' whose interest 
in his writings," remarks Mrs. Whitman, 
*'was manifestly enhanced by the perplexing 
anomalies of his character, and by the singular 
magnetism of his presence." One who knew 
him at this period of his life, says: — '*Every- 
thing about him distinguished him as a man of 
mark; his countenance, person, and gait, 
were alike characteristic. His features were 
regular, and decidedly handsome. His com- 
plexion was clear and dark ; the color of his 
fine eyes seemingly a dark gray, but on closer 
inspection they were seen to be of that neutral 
violet tint which is so difficult to define. His 
forehead was, without exception, the finest in 
proportion and expression that we have ever 
seen." 

Edgar Poe left the Mirror to take charge of 
the Broadway Journal, the sole management 



MtMUlK. dl 

of which, however, did not devolve upon him 
until July, whilst it was not till the following 
October that he became proprietor as well as 
editor of this publication. His confederates 
do not appear to have invested much money 
or talent in the undertaking, and when they 
retired and left the poet in entire possession of 
the publication, he would not seem to have 
added much to his worldly goods by the acqui- 
sition. 

In March he gave a lecture on the American 
poets in the library of the New York Historical 
Society, and it attracted much attention, not 
only by the originality and courage of his re- 
marks, but by the fascination of his presence, 
by his eloquence, and personal beauty. The 
furore which his lecture created caused him to 
be asked to Boston, and in the autumn he 
accepted an invitation to recite a poem in the 
lyceum of that city. '*When he accepted the 
invitation," avers Griswold, "he intended to 
write an original poem, upon a subject which 
he said had haunted his imagination for yea:rs, 
but cares, anxieties, and feebleness of will 
prevented, and a week before the appointed 
night he wrote a friend imploring assistance. 
'You compose with such astonishing facility,' 
he urged in his letter, 'that you can easily fur- 
nish one quite soon enough, a poem that shall 
be equal to my reputation. For the love of 
God I beseech you to help me in this extrem- 
ity. ' The lady wrote him kindly, advising 
him judiciously, but promising to attempt the 
fulfillment of his wishes. She was, however, 



52 MEMOIR. 

an invalid, and so failed. At last, instead of 
pleading illness, as he had previously done on 
a similar occasion, he determined to read his 
poem, of 'Al Aaraaf. '" It is impossible to 
say how much, if any, of his story is true. 
That a poem equal to his reputation could have 
been composed in a week, or in any length of 
time, by Mrs. Osgood, the friend alluded to, 
none knew better to be impossible than Poe. 
The lady, however, died before the publica- 
tion of the "Memoirs," therefore Griswold, 
who was her confidant, was pretty safe in tell- 
ing the tale. One who was present on the 
occasion of the recitation informs us that the 
lecture-course of the Boston Lyceum was wan- 
ing in popularity, and that Poe's fame being at 
its zenith, he was invited to deliver a poem at 
the opening of the winter session. *'I remem- 
ber him well," he remarks, **as he came on 
the platform. He was the best realization of 
a poet in feature, air, and manner, that I had 
ever seen, and the unusual paleness of his face 
added to its aspect of melancholy interest. He 
delivered a poem that no one understood, but 
at its conclusion gave the audience a treat 
which almost redeemed their disappointment. 
This was the recitation of his own 'Raven,' 
which he repeated with thrilling effect. It 
was something well worth treasuring in mem- 
ory. " *'Poe, " he adds, * 'after he returned to 
Mew York, was much incensed at Boston criti- 
cism on his poem." 

The poet was not probably incensed to any 
very great extent ; but doubtless found it a 



MEMOIR. 68 

profitable hit for his journal to make what he 
termed a "bobbery." A week after the lec- 
ture, therefore, he began to comment, in a 
tone of playful badinage, upon the remarks 
made by some Bostonian papers with respect 
to it. In the Broadway Journal for November 
ist, Poe, after quoting a paragraph from a 
paper defending him from the abuse of the 
Boston journals, says: "Our excellent friend 
Major Noah has suffered himself to be cajoled 
by that most beguiling of all little divinities. 
Miss Walters of the Transcript. We have 
been looking all over her article, with the aid 
of a taper, to see if we could discover a single 
syllable of truth in it, and really blush to ac- 
knowledge that we cannot. The adorable 
creature has been telling a parcel of fibs about 
us, by way of revenge for something that we 
did to Mr. Longfellow (who admires her very 
much), and for calling her *a pretty little 
witch' into the bargain. 

"The facts of the case seem to be these: — 
We were invited to 'deliver' (stand and deliver) 
a poem Before the Boston Lyceum. As a mat- 
ter of course, we accepted the invitation. The 
audience was 'large and distinguished.' Mr. 
Gushing preceded us with a very capital dis- 
course. He was much applauded. On arising 
we were most cordially received. We occu- 
pied some fifteen minutes with an apology for 
not 'delivering,* as is usual in such cases, a di- 
dactic poem — a didactic poem, in our opinion, 
being precisely no poem at all. After some 
further words — still of apology — for the 'in- 



S4 MEMOIR. 

definitiveness, ' and * general imbecility* of 
what we had to offer — all so unworthy of a 
Bostonian audience — we commenced, and, 
with many interruptions of applause, con- 
cluded. Upon the whole, the approbation was 
considerably more (the more the pity, too) than 
that bestowed upon Mr. Gushing. 

"When we had made an end, the audience 
of course arose to depart, and about one-tenth 
of them probably had really departed when 
Mr. Coffin, one of the managing committee, 
arrested those who remained by the announce- 
ment that we had been requested to deliver 
The Raven.' We delivered 'The Raven' 
forthwith (without taking a receipt), were very 
cordially applauded again, and this was the end 
of it, with the exception of the sad tale in- 
vented, to suit her own purposes, by that ami- 
able little enemy of ours, Miss Walters. We 
shall never call a woman 'a pretty little witch* 
again as long as we live." 

There is a great deal more to the same effect, 
the whole of which Griswold reprinted in his 
*' Memoir," but we have been unable to per- 
ceive in its good-natured bantering anything 
objectionable, although Poe's biographer ap- 
pears to have discovered something terrible 
hidden in the jokes about the Bostonians and 
their "Frog Pond," and deems "it is scarcely 
necessary to suggest that this must have been 
written before he had quite recovered from the 
long intoxication which maddened him at the 
time to which it refers." As "the time to 
which it refers" was evidently that of the lee- 



MEMOIR. 65 

ture, and as it was written upv/ards of a week 
after that event, and as Poe renewed the dis- 
cussion in the same tone three weeks later, 
"the long intoxication" must indeed have been 
an unusually lengthy one. One paragraph 
from Poe's second notice of the affair will 
doubtless suffice. *'We know very well that, 
among a certain clique of the Frogpondians, 
there existed a predetermination to abuse us 
under asy circumstances. We knew that write 
what we would they would swear it to be 
worthless. We knew that were we to compose 
for them a 'Paradise Lost' they would pro- 
nounce it an indifferent poem. It would have 
been very weak in us, then, to put ourselves 
to the trouble of attempting to please 
these people. We preferred pleasing our- 
selves. We read before them a 'juvenile,' a 
very 'juvenile,' poem, and thus the Frogpon- 
dians were had, were delivered up to the 
enemy bound hand and foot. Never were a 
set of people more completely demolished. 
They have blustered and flustered, but what 
have they done or said that has not made them 
more thoroughly ridiculous? what in the name 
of Thomas, is it possible for them to do or to 
say? We 'delivered' them the 'juvenile 
poem,' and they received it with applause. 
This is accounted for by the fact that the 
clique (contemptible in numbers as in every- 
thing else) were overruled by the rest of the 
assembly. These maliguants did not dare to 
interrupt by their preconcerted hisses the re- 
spectful and profound attention of the major- 



56 MEMOIR. 

Ity. . . . The poem being thus well received in 
spite of this ridiculous little cable, the next 
thing to be done was to abuse it in the papers. 
Here they imagined they were sure of their 
game. But what have they accomplished? 
The poem, they say, is bad. We admit it. 
We insisted upon this fact in our prefatory re- 
marks, and we insist upon it now, over and 
over again." . . . 

And these hurried newspaper jottings, which 
Griswold himself admits were written when 
Poe was suffering from "cares, anxieties, and 
feebleness of will," and when, as he elsewhere 
shows, the poor persecuted poet was in pecuni- 
ary difficulties, and when, not able to pay for 
assistance, he was obliged somehow to write 
nearly all the journal himself; and yet, under 
all these conflicting ills, these few jocular, 
although overstrained, jottings are unearthed 
and adduced as evidence of Poe's irretrievably 
bad nature. It is a more pleasant task than 
having to refer to such distorted views of envy, 
hatred, and malice, to turn to the picture which 
Mrs. Osgood gives of Poe at this point in his 
life. *'My first meeting with the poet," she 
remarks, *'was at the Astor House. A few 
days previous Mr. Willis had handed me at the 
table dhote that strange and thrilling poem 
entitled 'The Raven,' saying that the author 
wanted my opinion of it. Its effect upon me 
was so singular, so like that of 'weird, un- 
earthly music,* that it was with a feeling 
almost of dread I heard he desired an intro- 
duction. Yet I could not refuse without seem- 



MEMOIR. 57 

ing ungrateful, because I had just heard of his 
enthusiastic and partial eulogy of my writings 
in his lecture on American Literature. I shall 
never forget the morning when I was sum- 
moned to the drawing-room by Mr. Willis to 
receive him. With his proud and beautiful 
head erect, his dark eyes flashing with the 
electric light of feeling and of thought, a pecu- 
liar, an inimitable blending of sweetness and 
of hauteur in his expression and manner, he 
greeted me calmly, gravely, almost coldly, yet 
with so marked an earnestness that 1 could not 
help being deeply impressed by it. From that 
moment until his death we were friends." 
Again she writes of Poe — "I have never seen 
him otherwise than gentle, generous, well- 
bred, and fastidiously refined. To a sensitive 
and delicately-nurtured woman there was a 
peculiar and irresistible charm in the chivalric, 
graceful, and almost tender reverence with 
which he invariably approached all women who 
won his respect." 

Another and still more devoted friend of the 
fascinating poet, Mrs. Whitman, quotes the 
opinions of "a woman of fine genius," who at 
this time made Poe's acquaintance. *'It was 
in the brilliant circles," she says, ''that assem- 
bled in the winter of 1845-46 at the houses of 
Mr. Dewy, Miss Anna Lynch, Mr. Lawson, 
and others, that we first met Edgar Poe. His 
manners were at these reunions refined and 
pleasing, and his style and scope of conversa- 
tion that of a gentleman and a scholar. What- 
ever may have been his previous career, there 



58 MEMOIR. 

was nothing in his appearance or manner to 
indicate his excesses. He delighted in the so- 
ciety of superior women, and had an exquisite 
perception of all graces of manner and shades 
of expression. We all recollect the interest 
felt at the time in everything emanating from 
his pen — the relief it was from the dullness of 
ordinary writers — the certainty of something 
fresh and suggestive. His critiques were read 
with avidity; not that he convinced the judg- 
ment, but that people felt their ability and 
their courage. Right or wrong, he was ter- 
ribly in earnest." "And," as Mrs. Whitman 
adds, "like De Quincey, he never supposed any- 
thing, he always knew." 

This last lady, in her thoughtful work on 
"Edgar Poe and his Critics" recounts an inci- 
dent of the poet which occurred at one o.f the 
soirees he was accustomed to attend. "A 
lady, noted for her great lingual attainments, 
wishing to apply a wholesome check to the 
vanity of a young author, proposed inviting 
him to translate for the company a difficult 
passage in Greek, of which language she knew 
him to be profoundly ignorant, although given 
to a rather pretentious display of Greek quo- 
tations in his published writings. Poe's earn- 
est and persistent remonstrance against this 
piece of mechancete alone averted the embar- 
rassing test. Trifling as this anecdote may 
appear, it is a good proof of that generous and 
charitable disposition which those who knew 
him only through Griswold's "Memoir," have 
so unwarrantably denied him the possession 



MEMOIR. 59 

of. Reverting to Mrs. Whitman's book, we 
learn that *' sometimes his fair young wife was 
seen with him at these weekly assemblages in 
Waverley Place. She seldom took part in the 
conversation, but the memory of her sweet 
and girlish face, always animated and viva- 
cious, repels the assertion, afterwards so cruelly 
and recklessly made, that she died a victim 
to the neglect and unkindness of her 
husband, who, as it has been said, 'deliber- 
ately sought her death that he might embalm 
her memory in immortal dirges.' " Gilfillan 
tells us that Poe caused the death of his wife 
that he might have a fitting theme for "The 
Raven;" but unfortunately for the truth of 
that reverend gentleman's theory, the poem 
was published two years previous to the event 
which he so ingeniously assumed it to com- 
memorate. Friend and foe alike, who knew 
anything of Poe, bear testimony to the unvary- 
ing kindness and affection of the poet for his 
youthful wife. "It is well known to those ac- 
quainted with the parties," says Mrs. Whit- 
man, "that the young wife of Edgar Poe died 
of Lingering consumption, which manifested it- 
self early in her girlhood. All who have had 
opportunities for observation in the matter 
have noticed her husband's tender devotion to 
her during her prolonged illness. ... It is 
true that, notwithstanding her vivacity and 
cheerfulness at the time we have alluded to, 
her health was even then rapidly sinking, and 
it was for her dear sake, and for the recovery 
of that peace which had been so fatally imper- 



60 MEMOIR. 

iled amid the irritations and anxieties of his 
New York life, that Poe left the city and re- 
moved to the little Dutch cottage in Fordham, 
where he passed the three remaining years of 
his life." 

The labors of Edgar Poe during his posses- 
sion of the Broadway Journal must have been 
enormous. Week after week he wrote a large 
portion of its folio pages himself, in addition 
to performing the thousand duties of an edi- 
torial proprietor — the "much friendly assist- 
ance," which Griswold, who said also that he 
was friendless, asserts he received in his man- 
agement of the journal, being chiefly confined 
to the contribution of a few verses. He was 
only able to comply with this great strain 
upon his mental and physical strength by re» 
printing many of his published tales and poems 
in the columns of his paper, and even this sys- 
tem could not have afforded very material re- 
lief, as every article was submitted to the 
most scrutinizing supervision, and an infinity 
of corrections and alterations made. A jour- 
nal of his own, in which he could give vent to 
his untrammeled opinions, unchecked by the 
mercantile, and, undoubtedly, more prudential 
views of publishers, had long been one of Poe's 
most earnest desires, and he attained his wish 
in the possession of the Broadway Journal; 
but poverty, ill-health, want of worldly knowl- 
edge, and a sick — a dying wife, all combined 
to overpower his efforts. What could the un- 
fortunate poet do? During the few months 
that he had complete eontrol of the moribund 



MEMOIR. 61 

journal he made it, considering all things, as 
good a cheap literary paper as was ever pub- 
lished. All his efforts, however, were insuffi- 
cient to keep it alive, so, on the 3d of Janu- 
ary, 1846, the poor poet was obliged to resign 
his favorite hobby of a paper of his own. It 
may be pointed out that whilst in possession 
of his journal he availed himself of the oppor- 
tunity of displaying his almost Quixotic feel- 
ings of gratitude — tho e feelings denied him 
by the ruthless Gris wold — towards all who had 
befriended him, and n ^t only to the living 
whose aid might continue, but towards those 
who had already entered into the *' hollow 
vale." His generous tributes to departed 
worth are proofs of his nobility of heart, of 
greater weight than any disproof the malign- 
ity of Griswold would invent. 

Besides the work on his own paper, Poe had 
somehow contrived to contribute a few tales 
and sketches to some of the magazines, and, 
among others, to Mr. Godey's Lady's Book. 
In the May number of this publication he com- 
menced a series of critiques, entitled the "Lit- 
erati of New York," "in which he professed," 
remarks Griswold, with his wonted sneer, "to 
give some honest opinions at random respect- 
ing their authorial merits." These essays 
were immensely successful, but the caustic 
style of some of them produced terrible com- 
motion in the ranks of mediocrity, as may be 
seen from Mr. Godey's notes to the readers 
respecting the anonymous and other letters he 
receives concerning them. "We are not to 



62 MEMOIR. 

be intimidated," he remarks, "by a threat of 
the loss of friends, or turned from our pur- 
pose by honeyed words. . . . Many attempts 
have been made and are being made by vari- 
ous persons to forestall public opinion. We 
have the name of one person. Others are 
busy with reports of Mr. Poe's illness. Mr. 
Poe has been ill, but we have letters from 
him of very recent dates, also a new batch of 
the Literati, which shows anything but feeble- 
ness either of body or mind. Almost every 
paper that we exchange with has praised our 
new enterprise, and spoken in high terms of 
Mr. Poe's opinion." Dissatisfied with the 
manner in which his literary weakness had 
been reviewed by Poe, a Dunn English or 
Dunn Brown, for he is duplicately named, 
instead of waiting, as Griswold did, for the 
poet's death, when every ass could have its 
kick at the lion's carcase, "retaliated in a 
personal newspaper article," remarks Duy- 
ckinck,in his invaluable Encyclopedia, and "the 
communication was reprinted in the Evening 
Mirror in New York, whereupon Poe instituted 
a libel suit against that journal, and recovered 
several hundred dollars for defamation of 
character. ' ' 

If there be any one entertaining the 
slightest belief in Griswold 's veracity, let 
him now refer to his unfaithful account of this 
affair in the soi-disant "Memoir," and compare 
it with the facts of the case. He states that 
Dunn English "chose to evince his resentment 
of the critic's unfairness by the publication of 



MEMOIR. 63 

a card, in which he painted strongly the in- 
firmities of Poe's life and character." *'Poe's 
article," he continues, "was entirely false in 
what purported to be the facts. The state- 
ment of Dr. English appeared in the New York 
Mirror of the 23d June, and on the 27th Mr. 
Poe sent to Mr. Godey, for publication in the 
Lady's Book, his rejoinder, which Mr. Godey 
very properly declined to print." This led, 
asserts Griswold, "to a disgraceful quarrel," 
and to the "premature conclusion" of the 
Literati; and that Poe "ceased to write for the 
Lady's Book in consequence of Mr. Godey's 
justifiable refusal to print in that miscellany 
his 'Reply to Dr. English.* " Poe's review 
of "English" appeared in the second or June 
number of the Literati, and from our knowl- 
edge of Griswold 's habitual inaccuracy, we 
were not surprised to find, upon reference to 
the magazine, that the sketches ran their 
stipulated course until October, and after that 
date Poe still continuing a contributor to the 
Lady's Book ; nor were we surprised to find 
Mr. Godey writing to the Knickerbocker 
magazine in defense and praise of Poe's "hon- 
orable and blameless conduct;" but what cer- 
tainly did startle us was to discover that the 
whole of the personalities of the supposed 
critique, included in the collection of Poe's 
works edited by Griswold, were absent from 
the real critique published in the Lady's 
Book! 

Recoiling from such unsavory subjects, it is 
a pleasant change to look upon the charming 



64 MEMOIR. 

picture of the cruelly belibeled poet, and his 
diminutive menage^ as portrayed by Mrs. 
Osgood. *'It was in his own simple yet poeti- 
cal home," she remarks, "that to me the char- 
acter of Edgar Poe appeared in its most beau- 
tiful light. Playful, affectionate, witty, 
alternately docile and wayward as a petted 
child — for his young, gentle, and idolized wife, 
and for all who came, he had, even in the 
midst of his most harassing literary duties, a 
kind word, a pleasant smile, a graceful and 
courteous attention. At his desk, beneath 
the romantic picture of his loved and lost 
Lenore, he would sit hour after hour, patient, 
assiduous, and uncomplaining, tracing in an 
exquisitely clear chirography, and with almost 
superhuman swiftness, the lightning thoughts, 
the *rare and radiant' fancies as they flashed 
through his wonderful and ever-v/akened 
brain. I recollect one morning toward the 
close of his residence in this city, when he 
seemed unusually gay and light-hearted. Vir- 
ginia, his sweet wife, had written me a press- 
ing invitation to come to them ; and I, wh© 
could never resist her affectionate summons, 
and who enjoyed his society far more in his 
own home than elsewhere, hastened to Amity 
Street. I found him just completing his series 
of papers entitled *The Literati ot New York. * 
•See,' said he, displaying in laughing triumph 
several little rolls of narrow paper (he always 
wrote thus for the press), 'T am going to show 
you, by the difference of length in these, the 
different degrees of estimation in which I hold 



MEMOIR. 6$ 

all you literary people. ' In each of these, one 
of you is rolled up and fully discussed. Come, 
Virginia, help me!' And one by one they 
unfolded them. At last they came to one 
which seemed interminable. Virginia laugh- 
ingly ran to one corner of the room with one 
end, and her husband to the opposite with the 
other. 'And whose lengthened sweetness long 
drawn out is that?' said I. *Hear her,' he 
cried, 'just as if her little vain heart didn't 
tell her it's herself!* " 

It was in the summer of 1846 that the poet 
removed his dying wife to the quietude and 
repose of the cottage at Fordham, Westchester 
County, near New York. "Here," exclaims 
Mrs. Whitman, in her exalted essay on "Edgar 
Poe and his Critics" — the noblest memorial 
yet raised to the poet's memory — "here he 
watched her failing breath in loneliness and 
privation through many solitary moons, until, 
on a desolate, dreary day of the ensuing win- 
ter, he saw her remains borne from beneath 
its lowly roof. ' ' The fullest and most interest- 
ing account of Poe's life at Fordham is to be 
found in the "Reminiscences" of a brother 
author. Of his first visit to Fordham to see 
Poe he says — 

"We found him and his wife and his wife's 
mother, who was his aunt, living in a little 
cottage at the top of a hill. There was an acre 
or two of greensward, fenced in about the 
house, as smooth as velvet, and as clean as 
the best kept carpet. There was some grand 

5 Poe's Poems. 



66 MEMOIR. 

old cherry-trees in the yard that threw a mas- 
sive shade around them. 

**Poe had somehow caught a full-grown bob- 
olink. He had put him in a cage, which he 
had hung on a nail driven into the trunk of a 
cherry-tree. The poor bird was as unfit to 
live in his cage as his captor was to live in the 
world. He was as restless as his jailer, and 
sprang continually in a fierce, frightened way 
from one side of the cage to the other. I 
pitied him, but Poe was bent on training him. 
There he stood with his arms crossed before 
the tormented bird, his sublime trust in attain- 
ing the impossible apparent in his whole self. 
So handsome, so impassive in his wonderful, 
intellectual beauty, so proud and reserved, 
and yet so confidentially communicative, so 
entirely a gentleman upon all occasions that I 
ever saw him ; so tasteful, so good a talker was 
Poe that he impressed himself and his wishes, 
even without words, upon those with whom 
he spoke. . . Poe's voice was melody itself. 
He always spoke low, even in a violent discus- 
sion, compelling his hearers to listen if they 
would know his opinion, his facts, fancies, 
philosophy, or his weird imaginings. These 
last usually flowed from his pen, seldom from 
his tongue. 

**0n this occasion I was introduced to the 
young wife of the poet, and to the mother, 
then more than sixty years of age. She was a 
tall, dignified old lady, with a most lady-like 
manner, and her black dress, though old and 
much worn, looked really elegant on her. . . . 



MEMOIR. 67 

Mrs. Poe looked very young; she had large 
black eyes, and a pearly whiteness of com- 
plexion, which was a perfect pallor. Her pale 
face, her brilliant eyes, and her raven hair 
gave hei an unearthly look. One felt that she 
was almost a disrobed spirit, and when she 
coughed it was made certain that she was 
rapidly passing away. The mother seemed 
hale and strong, and appeared to be a sort of 
universal Providence for her strange children. 
*'The cottage had an air of taste and gentility 
that must have been lent to it by the presence 
of its inmates. So neat, so poor, so unfur- 
nished, and yet so charming a dwelling I never 
saw. . . The sitting-room was laid with check 
matting; four chairs, a light stand, and a 
hanging book-shelf completed its furniture. 
There were pretty presentation copies of books 
on the little shelves, and the Brownings had 
posts of honor on the stand. With quiet ex- 
ultation Poe drew from his side-pocket a letter 
that he had recently received from Elizabeth 
Barrett Browning. He read it to us. It was 
very flattering. She told Poe that his poem 
of 'The Raven' had awakened a fit of horror 
in England. . . He was at this time greatly 
depressed. Their extreme poverty, the sick- 
ness of his wife, and his own inability to write 
sufficiently accounted for this. . . We strolled 
away into the v/oods, and had a very cheerful 
time till some one proposed a game of leaping. 
I think it must have been Poe, as he was 
expert in the exercise. Two or three gentle- 
men agreed to leap with him, and though one 



68 MEMOIR. 

of them was tall, and had been a hunter m 
times past, Poe still distanced them all. But, 
alas ! his gaiters, long worn and carefully kept, 
were both burst in the grand leap that made 
him victor. ... I was certain he had no other 
shoes, boot, or gaiters. ... if any one had 
money, who had the effrontery to offer it to 
the poet?" 

This same writer, becoming intimate with 
the poet, made several visits to Fordham. 
*'The autumn came," he resumes, *'and Mrs. 
Poe sank rapidly in consumption, and I saw 
her in her bedchamber. Everything here 
was so neat, so purely clean, so scant and pov- 
erty-stricken. . . . There was no clothing on 
the bed, which was only straw, but a snow- 
white spread and sheets. The weather was 
cold, and the sick lady had the dreadful chills, 
that accompany the hectic fever of consump- 
tion. She lay on the straw bed, wrapped in 
her husband's greatcoat, with a large tortoise- 
shell cat in her bosom. The wonderful cat 
seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The 
coat and the cat were the sufferer's only 
means of warmth, except as her husband held 
her hands, and her mother her feet. Mrs. 
Clemm was passionately fond of her daughter, 
and her distress on account of her illness, and 
poverty, and misery, dreadful to see. 

**As soon as I was made aware of these pain- 
ful facts I came to New York, and enlisted the 
sympathies and services of a lady whose heart 
and hand were ever open to the poor and the 
miserable. . . . The lady headed a subscrip- 



MEMOIR. 69 

tion, and carried them sixty dollars the next 
week. From the day this kind lady first saw 
the suffering family ot the poet, she watched 
over them as a mother. She saw them often, 
and ministered to the comfort of the dying 
and the living. This same generous lady, 
who, we believe, was Mrs. Lewis, better 
known as 'Stella,* subsequently, when the 
poet died, received Mrs. Clemm into her own 
house, and sheltered her until she could re- 
turn to her friends in the South. " The author 
of these ** Reminiscences" concludes: — **Poe 
has been called a bad man. He was his own 
enemy, it is true; but he was a gentleman and 
a scholar. ... If the scribblers who have 
snapped like curs at his remains had seen him 
as his friends saw him, in his dire necessity 
and his great temptation, they would have 
been worse than they deem him to have writ- 
ten as they have concerning a man of whom 
they really knew next to nothing." 

When this writer brought the heartrending 
statement of the poor proud and unhappy 
poet's circumstances — without Poe's knowl- 
edge or connivance — before the world, Willis, 
in an article in the Home Journal, made an 
appeal to the public on the poet's behalf, sug- 
gesting, at the same time, that his case was a 
strong argument in favor of the establishment 
of an hospital for poor but well-educated per- 
sons. His remarks are worth repetition. He 
says: — *'The feeling we have long entertained 
on this subject has been freshened by a recent 
paragraph in the Express announcing that 



^0 MEMOIR. 

Mr. Edgfar Allan Poe and his wife were both 
dangerously ill and suffering for want of the 
common necessaries of life. Here is one of the 
finest scholars, one of the most original men 
of genius, and one of the most industrious of 
the literary profession of our country, whose 
temporary suspension of labor, from bodily 
illness, drops him immediately to a level with 
the common objects of public charity. There 
is no intermediate stopping-place — no respect- 
ful shelter where, with the delicacy due to 
genius and culture, he might secure aid, unad- 
vertised, till, with returning health, he could 
Resume his labors and his unmortified sense of 
independence. He must either apply to indi- 
vidual friends (a resource to which death is 
sometimes almost preferable), or suffer down 
to the level where Charity receives claimants, 
but where Rags and Humiliation are the only 
recognized ushers to her presence. Is this 
right? Should there not be in all highly 
civilized communities an institution designed 
expressly for educated and refined objects of 
charity — an hospital, a retreat, a home of 
seclusion and comfort, the sufficient claims to 
which would be such susceptibilities as are vio- 
lated by the above-mentioned appeal in a daily 
paper?" 

This noble and suggestive article of Mr. 
Willis, Griswold maliciously avers, was but an 
**ingenious apology for Mr. Poe's infirmities;" 
and then declares that the following letter, 
which was written just before Mrs. Poe's 
death. **was written for effect:" — 



MEMOIR. 71 

"My Dear Willis— -The paragraph which has been 
put in circulation respecting my wife's illness, my own, 
my property, etc., is now lying before me; together 
with the beautiful lines by Mrs. Locke and those by 

Mrs. , to which the paragraph has given rise, as 

well as your kind and manly comments in The Home 
Journal. The motive of the paragraph I leave to the 
conscience of him or her who wrote it or suggested it. 
Since the thing is done, however, and since the con- 
cerns of my family are thus pitilessly thrust before the 
public, I perceive no mode of escape from a public 
statement of what is true and what is erroneous in the 
report alluded to. That my wife is ill, then, is true ; 
and you may imagine with what feelings I add, that 
this illness, hopeless from the first, has been heightened 
and precipitated by her reception, at two different 
periods of anonymous letters — one enclosing the para- 
graph now in question, the other those published calum- 
nies of Messrs. , for which I yet hope to find 

redress in a court of justice. 

"Of the facts, that I myself have been long and dan- 
gerously ill, and that my illness has been a well-under- 
stood thing among my brethren of the press, the 
best evidence is afforded by the innumerable para- 
graphs of personal and of literary abuse with which I 
have been latterly assailed. This matter, however, will 
remedy itself. At the very first blush of my new pros- 
perity, the gentlemen who toadied me in the old will 
recollect themselves and toady me again. . . . That I 
am 'without friends' is a gross calumny, which I am 
sure you never could have believed, and which a thou- 
sand noble-hearted men would have good right never to 
forgive for permitting to pass unnoticed a«id undenied. 
I do not think, my dear Willis, that there is any need of 
my saying more. I am getting better, and may add, if 
it be any comfort to my enemies, — that I have little fear 
of getting worse. The tru^ is I have a great deal to 
do, and I have mad-e up my mind not to die till it is 
done. ' 'Sincerely yours, 

"Edgar A. Poe. 

"December 30, 1846." 

Animadverting upon this letter, the implac- 



72 MEMOIR. 

able Griswold asserts, notwithstanding the 
positive evidence to the contrary, that Poe 
*'had not been ill a great while, nor danger- 
ously at all ; that there was no literary or per- 
sonal abuse of him in the journals ; and that 
his friends had been applied to for money until 
their money was nearly exhausted." As 
already stated, a few weeks after this letter, 
which this calumniator of the dead declares 
**was written for effect," the poet's wife died; 
and in an autographic letter now before us, 
Poe positively reiterates the accusation that 
his wife, — "my poor Virginia, was continually 
tortured (although not deceived) by anony- 
mous letters, and on her deathbed declared 
that her life had been shortened by their 
writer." In January, 1847, the poet's darling 
wife died, and on a desolate dreary day her 
remains were interred in a vault in the neigh- 
borhood, in accordance with the permission of 
its owner. The loss of his wife threw Poe into 
a melancholy stupor which lasted for several 
weeks ; but nature reasserting her powers, he 
gradually resumed his wonted avocations. 
During the whole of the year the poet lived a 
quiet secluded life with his mother-in-law, 
receiving occasional visits from his friends and 
admirers ; musing over the memory of his lost 
Lenore, and thinking out the great and crown- 
ing work of his life — Eureka. An English 
friend, who visited the Fordham cottage in 
early autumn of 1847, and spent several weeks 
with its inmates, described to Mrs. Whitman 
its unrivaled neatness and the quaint simplic- 



MEMOIR. 73 

ity of its interior and surroundings. It was, 
at the time, bordered by a flower-garden, whose 
clumps of rare dahlias, and brilliant beds of 
autumnal flowers, showed, in the careful cul- 
ture bestowed upon them, the fine floral tastes 
of the presiding spirit. 

The attention which Poe gave to his birds 
and flowers surprised his visitor, who deemed 
it inconsistent with the gloom of his writings. 
Another friend, who visited the cottage dur- 
ing the summer of the same year, describes it 
as "half-buried in fruit-trees, and as having a 
thick grove of pines in its immediate neighbor- 
hood. " '*The proximity of the railroad, and 
the increasing population of the little village," 
adds Mrs. Whitman, "have since wrought 
great changes in the place. Round an old 
cherry-tree, near the door, was a broad bank 
of greenest turf. The neighboring beds of 
mignonette and heliotrope, and the pleasant 
shade above, made this a favorite seat. Rising 
at four o'clock in the morning, for a walk to 
the magnificent aqueduct bridge over Harlem 
River, our informant found the poet, with his 
mother-in-law, standing on the turf beneath 
the cherry-tree, eagerly watching the move- 
ments of two beautiful birds that seemed con- 
templating a settlement in its branches. He 
had some rare tropical birds in cages, which 
he cherished and petted with assiduous care." 
"Our English friend," continued Mrs. Whit- 
man, "described Poe as giving to his birds and 
flowers a delighted attention which seemed 
quite inconsistent with the gloomy and gro- 

6 Poe's Poems 



74 MEMOIR. 

tesque character of his writings. A favorite 
cat, too, enjoyed his friendly patronage, and 
often when he was engaged in composition it 
seated itself on his shoulder, purring as if in 
complacent approval of the work proceeding 
under its supervision, 

**During Poe's residence at Fordham, a walk 
to High Bridge was one of his favorite and 
habitual recreations," remarks Mrs. Whitman, 
and she describes the lofty and picturesque 
avenue across the aqueduct, where, in *'the 
lonesome latter years" of his life, the poet was 
accustomed to walk "at all times of the day 
and night, often pacing the then solitary path- 
way for hours without meeting a human 
being." A rocky ledge in the neighborhood, 
partly covered with pines and cedars, and com- 
manding a fine view of the surrounding coun- 
try, was also one of his favorite resorts, and 
here, resumes our informant, ''through long 
summer days, and through solitary starlit 
nights, he loved to sit, dreaming his gorgeous 
walking dreams, or pondering the deep prob- 
lems of 'the Universe,' — that grand 'prose 
poem' to which he devoted the last and most 
matured energies of his wonderful intellect." 
Towards the close of this "most immemorial 
year," this year in which he had lost his cousin 
bride, he wrote his weird monody of "Ula- 
lume. '* Like so many of his poems it was 
autobio,2;raphical, and, on the poet's own au- 
thority, we are informed that it was, "in its 
basis, although not in the precise correspond- 
ence of time, simply historical." It first 



memoir: 15 

appeared anonymously in Colton's American 
Review for December, 1847, as **Ulalume: a 
Ballad," and, being reprinted in the Home 
Journal, by an absurd mistake was ascribed to 
the editor, N. P. Willis. Subsequently, Mrs. 
Whitman, being one morning with Poe in the 
Providence Athenaeum Library, asked him if 
he had seen the new poem, and if he could tell 
who had written it. To her surprise he 
acknowledged himself the author, and, turn- 
ing to a bound volume of the Review, which 
was on a shelf near by, he wrote his name at 
the end of the poem, and there, a few months 
ago, a correspondent found it. The poem 
originally possessed an additional verse, but, 
at the suggestion of Mrs. Whitman, Poe sub- 
sequently omitted this, and thereby greatly 
strengthened the effect of the whole. The 
•final and suppressed stanza read thus : 

"Said we then — the two, then — Ah, can it 
Have been that the woodlandish ghouls 
The pitiful, the merciful ghouls — 

To bar up our path and to ban it 

From the secret that lies in these wolds— 

Had drawn up the specter of a planet 
From the limbo of 1 unary souls — 

This sinfully scintillant planet 
From the Hell of the planetary souls?" 

Early in 1848, Poe announced his intention 
of delivering a series of lectures, with a view 
to raise a sufficient capital to enable him to 
start a magazine of his own. In January of 
this 5^ear he thus wrote on the subject to his 
old and tried friend N. P Willis:— 



76 MEMOIR. 

"FoRDHAM, Jantiary 22, 1848. 

*My Dear Mr. Willis — I am about to make an effort 
at re-establishing myselt in the literary world, and feel 
that I may depend upon your aid. 

"My general aim is to 'start a magazine, to be called 
The Stylus ; but it would " be useless to me, even when 
established, if not entirely out of the control of a pub- 
lisher. 1 mean, therefore, to get up a jorffnal, which 
shall be my own, at all points. With this emd in view, 
I must get a list of at least five hundred subscribers to 
begin with — nearljr two hundred I have already. 1 pro- 
pose, however, to go south and west, among my per- 
sonal and literary friends — old College and West Point 
acquaintances — and see what I can do. In order to get 
the means of taking the first step, I propose to lecture at 
the Society Library, on Thursday, the 3d of February 
— and, that there may be no cause of squabbling, my 
subject shall not be literary at all. I have chosen a 
broad text — 'The Universe.' 

"Having thus given you the facts of the case, I leave 
all the rest to the suggestions of your ovt n tiact and gen- 
erosity. — GratefuUy.most gratetuUy, you r friend always, 

"Edcar a. Poe." 

This letter was speedily followt d by a pros- 
pectus, addressed To the Public, "The Stylus; 
a Monthly Journal of Literature Proper, the 
Fine Arts, and the Drama. To be edited 
by Edgar A. Poe," and from it the most 
noticeable paragraphs are extracted: *' Since 
resigning the conduct of the Southern Literary 
Messenger at the beginning of its third year, 
and more especially since retiring from the 
editorship of Graham's Magazine soon after 
the commencement of its second, I have had 
always in view the establishment of a monthly 
journal which should retain one or two of the 
chief features of the work first mentioned, 
abandonin>:>- or fy-veatly modifvin;7 its <;--ener:^] 



MEMOIR. 77 

character;— but not until now have I felt at 
liberty to attempt the execution of this design. 
I shall be pardoned for speaking more directly 
of the two magazines in question. Having in 
neither of them any proprietary right — the 
objects of their worthy owners, too, being at 
variance with my own — I found it not only 
impossible to effect anything, on the score of 
taste, for their mechanical appearance, but 
difficult to stamp upon them internally that 
individuality which I believed essential to their 
success. In regard to the permanent influence 
of such publications, it appears to me that con- 
tinuity and a marked certainty of purpose are 
requisites of vital importance, but attainable 
only where one mind alone has at least the 
general control. Experience, to be brief, has 
shown me that in founding a journal of my 
own, lies my sole chance of carrying out to 
completion whatever peculiar intentions I may 
have entertained. 

** These intentions are now as heretofore. It 
shall be the chief purpose of the magazine 
proposed to become known as one wherein 
may be found at all times, on all topics within 
its legitimate reach, a sincere and fearless 
opinion. It shall be a leading object to assert 
in precept and to maintain in practice the 
rights, while in effect it demonstrates the 
advantages, of an absolutely independent crit- 
icism—a criticism self-sustained, guiding itself 
only by intelligible laws of art; analyzing 
these laws as it applies them ; holding itself 



78 MEMOIR. 

aloof from all personal bias, and acknowledg- 
ing no fear save that of the right. 

*' There is no design, however, to make the 
journal a critical one solely, or even very es- 
pecially. It will aim at something more than 
the usual magazine variety, and at affording a 
fair field for the true talent of the land, with- 
out reference to the mere prestige of name, or 
the advantages of worldly wisdom. But since 
the efficiency of the v/ork must in great meas- 
ure depend upon its definiteness, The Stylus 
vfill limit itself to Literature Proper, the Fine 
Arts, and the Drama." 

Notwithstanding the large number of his 
admirers, and the friendly co-operation of Mr. 
Thomas C. Clark, who was to have been the 
publisher, Poe found the minimum number of 
subscribers necessary to start the magazine 
very difficult to obtain ; he therefore set about 
his lectures for the purpose of getting '*the 
means of taking the first step." 

The first lecture of the series was given in 
the library of the New York Historical Soci- 
ety; it was upon the cosmogony of the 
universe, and formed the substance of the 
work he afterwards published as "Eureka, a 
Prose Poem." Mr, M. B. Field, who was 
present, says — "It was a stormy night, and 
there were not more than sixty persons pres- 
ent in the lecture-room. . . . His lecture was 
a rhapsody of the most intense brilliancy. He 
appeared inspired, and his inspiration affected 
the scant audience almost painfully. His eyes 
seemed to glow like tbQSe of his own * Raven,' 



MEMOIR. 79 

and he kept us entranced for two hours and a 
half." Such small audiences, despite the en- 
thusiasm of the lecturer, or the lectured, could 
not give much material aid towards the poet's 
purpose. Poor and baffled he had to return to 
his lonely home at Fordham, to contemplate 
anew the problems of creation ; or to discuss 
with stray visitors, with an intensity of feel- 
ing and steadfastness of belief never surpassed, 
his unriddling of the secret of the universe. 

In the early summer of 1848 we find Poe 
delivering a lecture at Lowell on the "Female 
Poets of America." **In an analysis of the 
comparative merits of the New England poet- 
esses," says the Hon. James Atkinson, who 
attended the lecture, *'the lecturer awarded 
to Mrs. Osgood the palm of facility, ingenuity, 
and grace ; — to Mrs. Whitman, a pre-eminence 
in refinement of art, enthusiasm, imagination, 
and genius, properly so called ; — to Miss Lynch 
he ascribed an unequaled success in the con- 
centrated and forcible enunciation of the senti- 
ment of heroism and duty. " Mrs. Whitman, 
undoubtedly the finest female poet New Eng- 
land has produced, had been first seen by Poe, 
says Griswold, *'on his way from Boston, when 
he visited that city to deliver a poem before 
the Lyceum there. Restless near midnight, he 
wandered from his hotel near where she lived, 
until he saw her walking in a garden. He 
related the incident afterwards in one of his 
most exquisite poems, worthy of himself, of 
her, and of the most exalted passion." 

** Meanwhile, the beautiful young widow 



80 MEMOIR. 

lived on perfectly unconscious of the fierce 
flame she had aroused in the poet's heart, 
until, in the beginning of the summer of 1848, 
about the time of the above lecture, the first 
intimation reached her in the shape of the 
beautiful lines, *To Helen,' alluded to by Gris- 
wold, commencing, 'I saw thee once — once 
only — years ago. ' There was no signature to 
the poem, but the lady was acquainted with 
Edgar Poe's exquisite handwriting, and there- 
fore knew whence it came. About this time 
the poet went to Richmond, Virginia, and 
forming the acquaintance of the late Mr. 
James Thompson, the talented editorial pro- 
prietor of the Southern Literary Messenger, 
a^^reed to become a contributor to its pages. 
Mr. Thompson, like all who knew Poe person- 
ally, became strongly attached to him, and 
has left some interesting reminiscences of him. 
The poet at this period was making many in- 
quiries about Mrs. Whitman, and speaking 
both publicly and privately in high praise of 
her poetry, so that at last, even before they 
met, their names were, as Griswold truthfully 
states, frequently associated together. One 
day, says Mr. Thompson, Poe rushed into the 
office of the Messenger in a state of great ex- 
citement, sat down and wrote out a challenge 
to Mr. Daniels, editor of the Richmond Exam- 
iner, and requested Mr. Thompson to be its 
bearer to the person challenged ! In explana- 
tion of his conduct, he handed his friend a 
paragraph cut from the Examiner, giving an 
account of Poe's presumed engagement to 



MEMOIR. 81 

Mrs. Whitman, and making some comments 
on the lady's temerity. The enraged poet 
said he did not care what Daniels might say 
about him, but that he would oot have the 
lady's name dragged in. Mr. Thompson re- 
fused to deliver the challenge, and Poe went 
personally to see Daniels, and the result was 
that the offending paragraph was withdrawn. 
In September of this year, Poe, having ob- 
tained a letter of introduction from a lady 
friend, sought and obtained an interview with 
Mrs. Whitman. The result of this and several 
subsequent interviews, was the betrothal of the 
two poets, notwithstanding the most strenu- 
ous opposition of the lady's family. Much as 
she revered his genius, the opposition of her 
relatives to the match appears for a time to 
have caused the lady to withstand the poet's 
passionate appeals, but ultimately, as stated, 
they were engaged. The following para- 
graphs, from a letter written by Poe on the i8th 
of October of this year, show how intensely he 
could feel, and how earnestly he could express 
his feelings as well in private correspondence 
as in those compositions intended for the 
public eye : — 

" You do not love me, or you would 

have felt too thorough a sympathy with the 
sensitiveness of my nature, to have wounded 
me as you have done with this terrible passage 
of your letter — 'How often I have heard it 
said of you, **He has great intellectual power, 
but no principle — no moral sense." * 

**Is it possible that such expressions as 



82 MEMOIR. 

these could have been repeated to me — to me 
— by one whom I loved — ah, whom I love ! . . 

*'By the God who reigns in Heaven, I swear 
to you that my soul is incapable of dishonor — 
that, with the exception of occasional follies 
and excesses, which I bitterly lament, but to 
which I have been driven by intolerable sor- 
row, and which are hourly committed by 
others without attracting any notice whatever 
— I can call to mind no act of my life which 
would bring a blush to my cheek — or to yours. 
If I have erred at all, in this regard, it has 
been on the side of what the world would call 
a Quixotic sense of the honorable — of the chiv- 
alrous. The indulgence of this sense has been 
the true voluptuousness of my life. It was for 
this species of luxury that in early youth I de- 
liberately threw away from me a large fortune 
rather than endure a trivial wrong. 

**For nearly three years I have been ill, 
poor, living out of the world ; and thus, as I 
novw^ painfully see, have afforded opportunity 
to my enemies to slander me in private society 
without my knowledge, and thus, with im- 
punity. Althoughmuch, however, may (and, 
I now see, must) have been said to my dis- 
credit during my retirement, those few who, 
knowing me well, have been steadfastly my 
friends, permitted nothing to reach my ears — 
unless in one instance, of such a character that 
I could appeal to a court of justice for redress.* 
... I replied to the charge fully in a public 

«The Dunn-Eoglish libel. (See, ante, p. 62.)— Ed. 



MEMOIR. 83 

newspaper— afterwards suing the Mirror, (in 
which the scandal appeared, ) obtaining a verdict 
and receiving such an amount of damages as 
for the time to completely break up that jour- 
nal. And do you ask why men so misjudge 
me — why I have enemies? If your knowledge 
of my character and of my career does not 
afford you an answer to the query, at least it 
does not become me to suggest the answer. 
Let it suffice that I have had the audacity to 
remain poor, that I might preserve my inde- 
pendence — that, nevertheless, in letters, to a 
certain extent, and in certain regards, I have* 
been * successful, ' — that I have been a critic — 
an unscrupulously honest, and, no doubt, in 
many cases, a bitter one — that I have uni- 
formly attacked — where I attacked at all — 
those who stood highest in power and influ- 
ence; and that, whether in literature or soci- 
ety, I have seldom refrained from expressing, 
either directly or indirectly, the pure contempt 
with which the pretensions of ignorance, arro- 
gance, or imbecility inspire me. And you 
who know all this, you ask me why I have 
enemies. . . . Forgive me if there be bitter- 
ness in my tone." . . . 

The man who could write thus, it is impos- 
sible not to feel, must have been sincere ; must 
have been incapable of committing the mean, 
the dishonoring actions, placed by an envi- 
ous and jealous writer to his charge. 

In a letter addressed to the same dear friend, 
and dated the 24th of November, 1848, Poe 
exhibits his pistolary powers in quite a differ* 



84 MEMOIR. 

ent light. After certain matters of a private 
nature, he remarks : 

"Your lines *To Arcturus' are truly beautiful. I 
would retain the Virgilian words, omitting the transla- 
tion. The first note leave out. 6i Cygni has been 
proved nearer than Arcturus, and Alpha Lyrse is pre- 
sumably so. Bessel also has shown six other stars to be 
nearer than the brighter ones of this hemisphere. 
There is an obvious tautology in 'pale candescent.* To 
be candescent is to become white with heat. Why not 
read — *To blend vAth thine its incandescent fire?' For. 
give me, sweet Helen, for these very stupid and cap- 
tious criticisms. Take vengeance on my next poem. 
When 'Ulalume' appears, cut it out and enclose it — 
newspapers seldom reach me. In last Saturday's Home 
Journal is a letter from M. C. (who is it?) I enclose a 
passage which seems to refer to my lines — 
* — the very roses* odors, 
Died in the arms of the adoring airs. ' 
The accusation will enable you to see how ground- 
less such accusations may be, even when seemingly best 
founded. Mrs. H's book was published three months 
ago. You had my poem about the ist of June — was it 
not? — Forever your own. "Edgar. 

"Remember me to Mr. Pabodie." 

The Mr. Pabodie referred to was a great 
friend of Poe's, and as it will be necessary to 
speak of him again, to show the terms upon 
which the two lived, the following otherwise 
unimportant letter is quoted : 

"FoRDHAM, December, '48. 
"My Dear Mr. Pabodie— On the principal of 'better 
late than never,' I seize the first opportunity afforded 
me, in the midst of cares and vexations of all kinds, to 
write you a few words of cordial thanks for your consid- 
erate and gentlemanly attentions to me while in Provi- 
dence. I do hope that you will always think of me as 
one of the most obliged and most devoted of your 



MEMOIR. 85 

friends. Please say to Mrs. W., when you next see her, 
that I thank her for the 'papers,' and for her prompt- 
itude. Say, also, that perhaps Mrs. Wright is right, but 
that I believe her wrong, and desire to be kindly re- 
membered. The commands about post have been at- 
tended to. Present my respects to Mrs. Allan and to 
your father.— Truly yours always. 

"Edgar Allan Poe. 
"W. J. Pabodie, Esq." 

In the very month this letter was written 
Poe's engagement with Mrs. Whitman came 
to an end. The real cause of the rupture be- 
tween the poet and his betrothed has never 
been published, although it is to be hoped 
that, for the sake of the much slandered dead, 
the seal of silence will some day be broken. 
It is impossible to impute blame to either of 
the parties concerned, as undoubtedly the true 
cause of the separation arose from circum- 
stances beyond their control. According to the 
diabolical story told by Griswold, and since re- 
peated in nearly every memoir of the poet, on 
the evening before what should have been 
the bridal morn, Poe committed such drunken 
outrages at the house of his affianced bride that 
it was fo\ind necessary to summon the police 
to eject him, which of course ended the en- 
gagement. This misstatement being brought 
under the notice of the parties concerned, Mr. 
Pabodie wrot?e a direct and specific denial of it 
to the New York Tribune, and it appeared in 
that paper on the 7th of June, 1852. **I am 
authorized to say, ''remarks Mr. Pabodie, who, 
it should be mentioned, was an eminent law- 
yer as well as a man of considerable literary 



86 MEMOIR. 

ability, **I am authorized to say, not only from 
my personal knowledge, but also from the 
Statement of all who were conversant with the 
affair, that there exists not a shadow of foun- 
dation for the story above alluded to." The 
same letter goes on to state that its writer 
knew Poe well, and at the time alluded to was 
with him daily. "I was acquainted with the 
circumstances of his engagement, and with 
the causes which led to its dissolution." con- 
tinues Mr. Pabodie ; and he concludes his let- 
ter with an earnest appeal to Griswold to do 
all that now lies in his power '*to remove an 
undeserved stigma from the memory of the 
departed." An honorable man would have 
acknov/ledged the incorrectness of his informa- 
tion, and have done his best to obviate the 
consequences of his accusation. Not so this 
biographer ; he wrote a savage letter to Mr. 
Pabodie, threatening terrible things if he did 
not withdraw his statement. Mr. Pabodie did 
not withdraw, but, in another letter to Gris- 
wold, brought forward incontrovertible proofs 
of other falsifications indulged in by the author 
of the ''Memoir," who henceforward remained 
discreetly silent. 

During the larger portion of 1848, Poe con- 
tinued his studies, which at this period were 
chiefly philosophical, at his home at Fordham. 
Beyond a few reviews, he would appear to 
have given his whole time to the completion 
of "Eureka," the last and grandest monument 
of his genius. The merits of this wonderful 
•*prose poem" this is neither the time nor the 



MEMOIR. 87 

place to discuss; and it suffices now to point 
out that in all probability no other author ever 
flung such an intensity of feeling, or ever be- 
lieved more steadfastly in the truth of his 
work, than did Edgar Pdfe in this attempted 
unriddling of the secret of the universe. He 
was wont to discuss the various knotty points 
of *' Eureka" with a startling eloquence that 
electrified his hearers into belief. He could 
not submit to hear the claims of his work dis- 
cussed by unsympathetic and incompetent 
critics, and after it was published in book form, 
and thus made general property, he addressed 
this thoroughly characteristic letter to Mr. C. 
F. Hoffman, then editor of the Literary World, 
anent a flippant critique of ** Eureka" which 
had appeared in the columns of that publica- 
tion. 

"Dear Sir— In your paper of July 29, I find some 
comments on 'Eureka,' a late book of my own, and I 
know you too well to suppose for a moment that you 
will refuse me the privilege of a few words in reply. I 
feel even that I might safely claim from Mr. Hoffman 
the right which every author has, of replying to his 
critic tone for tone, — that is to say, of answering your 
correspondent's flippancy by flippancy, and sneer by 
sneer, —but, in the first place, I do not wish to disturb 
the 'World,' and in the second, I feel that I should never 
be done sneerin|^ in the present instance were L once to 
begin. Lamartme blames Voltaire for the use which 
he made of misrepresentations (ruses) in his attacks on 
the priesthood ; but our young students of theology do 
not seem to be aware that in defense, or what they fancy 
to be defense, of Christianity, there is anything wrong in 
such gentlemanly peccadilloes as the deliberate perver- 
sion of an author's text — to say nothing of the minor 
indecora of reviewing a book without it, and without 
having the faintest suspicion of what it is about 



88 MEMOIR. 

** you vnll understand that it is merely the misrepre- 
sentations of the critique in question m which I claim 
the privilege of reply; the mere opinions of the writer 
can be of no consequence to me — and 1 should imagine 
of very little to himself —that is to say, if he knows 
himself personally as well as I have the honor of know- 
ing him. The first misrepresentation is contained in 
this sentence: — This letter is a keen burlesque on the 
Aristotelian or Baconian method of ascertaining Truth, 
both of which the writer ridicules and despises, and 
pours forth his rhapsodical ecstasies in a glorification of 
a third mode — the noble art of guessing. ' What I 
really say is this: — 'That there is no absolute certainty 
either in the Aristotelian or Baconian process ; that for 
this reason nei(ther philosophy is so profound as it fan- 
cies itself, and that neither has a right to sneer at that 
seemingly imaginative process called Intuition (by 
which the great Kepler attained his laws), since "Intui- 
tion," after all, is but the conviction arising from those 
inductions or deductions, of which the processes are so 
shadowy as to escape our consciousness, elude our 
reason, or defy our capacity of expression. ' The second 
misrepresentation runs thus: — 'The developments of 
electricity and the formation of stars and suns, lumi- 
nous and non -luminous, moons and planets, with their 
rings, etc., is deduced, very much according to the 
nebular theory of Laplace, from the principle pro- 
pounded above.' Now, the impression intended to be 
made here upon the reader's mind by the ' Student of 
Theology' is, evidently, that my theory may be all very 
well in its way, but that it is nothing but Laplace over 
again with some modiiications that he (the Student of 
Theology) cannot regard as at all important. I have 
only to say that no gentleman can accuse me of the dis- 
ingenuousness here implied; inasmuch as, having pro- 
ceeded with my theory to that point at which Laplace's 
theory meets it I then give Laplace's theory m full, 
with the expression of my firm conviction of its absolute 
truth at all points. The ground covered by the great 
French astronomer compares with that covered by my 
theory, as a btibHle compares with the ocean on which it 
floats; nor has he the slightest allusion to 'the principle 
propounded above,' the principle of Unity beinji the 



MEMOIR. 89 

source of all things— the principle of Gravity being 
merely the Reaction of the Divine Act which irradiated 
all things from Unity. In fact, no point of my theory 
has been even so much as alluded to by Laplace. 1 
have not considered it necessary here to speak of the 
astronomical knowledge displayed in the 'stars and 
suns' of the Student of Theology, nor to hint that it 
would be better grammar to say that 'development and 
formation* are. than that development and formation is. 
The third misrepresentation lies in a foot-note, where 
the critic says: — "Further than this, Mr. Pbe's claim 
that he can account for the existence of all organized 
beings — man included — merely from those principles 
on which the origin and present appearance of suns and 
worlds are explained, must be set down as mere bold 
assertion, without a particle of evidence. In others 
words, we should term it arrant fudge. ' The perversion 
of this point is involved in a willful misapplication of 
the word 'principles.' I say 'willful' because at page 63 
I am particularly carefully to distinguish between the 
principles proper — Attraction and Repulsion — and those 
merely resultant sub-principles which control the uni- 
verse in detail. To these sub-principles, swayed by the 
immediate spiritual influence of Deity, I leave, without 
examination, all that which the Student of Theology so 
roundly asserts I account for on the principles which 
account for the constitution of suns, etc 

"Were these 'misrepresentations' (is that the name 
for them?) made for any less serious a purpose than 
that of branding my book as 'impious,' and myself as a 
'pantheist,' a 'polytheist,' a Pagan, or a God knows 
what (and, indeed, I care very little, so it be not a Stu- 
dent of Theology'), I would have permitted their dis- 
honesty to pass unnoticed, through pure contempt for 
the boyishness, for the turn-down-shirt-coUarness of 
their tone : but, as it is, you will pardon me, Mr. Editor, 
that I have been compelled to expose a 'critic' who, 
courageously perserving his own anonymousity, takes 
advantage of my absence from the city to misrepresent, 
and thus vilify me, by nan 

"Edgar A. Poe. 

"FdDHAM, September 20, 1848." 



90 MEMOIR. 

During the last year of his life Poe saw 
much of Mrs. Estelle Lewis, already alluded to 
as **Stella,*' and he and his aunt both received 
much kindness from that accomplished woman. 
His exalted critique on her writings origin- 
ally appeaired in the Messenger, in 1848, and 
in the same year he published the poem to her 
entitled "An Enigma," but through an unfor- 
tunate mistake he mistook her Christian name, 
and wrought into his lines " Sarah '•^ instead of 
* 'Estelle." Lying before us, in his beautiful 
caligraphy, is this little note announcing its 
production : — 

••27th November, 1848. 

"Dear Mrs. Lewis— A thousand thanks for your re- 
peated kindness, and above all for the comforting and 
cheering woitls of your note. Your advice I feel as a 
command which neither my heart nor my reason would 
venture to disobey. May heaven for ever bless you and 
yours ! 

* A day or two ago 1 sent to one of the magazines the' 
sojl net enclosed. Its tone is somewhat too light, but it 
embodies a riddle which I put you to the trouble of ex- 
pounding. Will you try? Your always, 

"Edgar A. Poe." 

The winter of 1848-49, and the spring of the 
latter year, Poe passed at Fordham, and during 
this time he is alleged to have written a book 
entitled Phases of American Literature; 
Mr. M. A. Daly states that he saw the complete 
work, but the manuscript would seem to have 
disappeared. After Poe's death the larger por- 
tion of his papers passed through Griswold's 
hands, and his manipulation of them will, 
doubtless, account for all deficiencies and 



MEMOIR. 91 

shortcomings. In the summer, Poe revisited 
Richmond, and spent between two and three 
months there, during which time he delivered 
two lectures, in the Exchange Concert-Room, 
on *'The Poetic Principle." 

**When in Richmond," says Mr. Thompson, 
•'he made the office of the Messenger a place 
of frequent resort. His conversation was 
always attractive, and at times very brilliant. 
Among modern authors his favorite was 
Tennyson, and he delighted to recite from 
*The Princess,' the song, * Tears, idle Tears* 
— and a fragment of which — 

" 'When tinto dying eyes 
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square,' "^ 

he pronounced unsurpassed by any image 
expressed in writing." For Mr. Thompson, 
whom he inspired with an affection similar to 
that with which he inspired all with whom he 
had personal dealings, he wrote a quantity of 
his sparkling and vivid "Marginalia," as well 
as reviews of "Stella" (Mrs. Lewis) and of 
Mrs. Osgood. To his probity and general 
worth, Mr. Thompson, who undoubtedly saw 
more of him in his latter days than any person 
not a relative, bears affectionate testimony. 
Writing to Mr. James Wood Davidson, in 1853, 
he remarks: — "Two years ago I had a long 
conversation in Florence with Robert and 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning concerning Poe. 
The two poets, like yourself, had formed an 
ardent and just admiration of the author of 
*The Raven,' and feel a strong desire to see 



92 MEMOIR. 

his memory vindicated from moral aspersion.*' 
Unfortunately the vindication has been slower 
than the aspersion to make its way in the 
world. 

The poet had not been long in Richmond on 
this occasion of his final visit before it was 
rumored that he was engaged to the love of 
his youth, Mrs. Shelton, who was now a 
widow. He never alluded in any way to such 
an engagement to his friend Mr. Thompson, 
intimate as he was with him, but there would 
appear to have been some truth in the report, 
and on the news of Poe's death Mrs. Shelton 
went into mourning for him. On the 4th of 
October he left Richmond by train, with the 
intention, it is supposed, of going to Fordham 
to fetch Mrs. Clemm. Before his departure he 
complained to a friend of indisposition, of 
chilliness and exhaustion, but, notwithstand- 
ing, determined to undertake the journey. 
He left the train at Baltimore, and some hours 
later was discovered in the street insensible. 
How he had been taken ill no one really 
knows, and all the absurd reports circulated 
about his last moments were absolute inven- 
tions. He was dying when found, and, being 
unknown, was taken at once to the Hospital, 
where he died on Sunday the 7th of October, 
1849, of inflammation of the brain, insensible, 
it is supposed, to the last. The following day 
he was buried in the burial ground of West- 
minster Church, close by the grave of his 
grandfather. General David Poe. No stone 
marks the spot where he lies. 



MEMOIR. 93 

In telling the true story of this poet's life it 
is impossible to utterly ignore the fact — a fact 
of which his enemies have made so much — 
that towards the close of his melancholy career, 
sorrow and chronic pecuniary embarrassment 
drove him to the use of stimulants, as afford- 
ing the only procurable nepenthe for his 
troubles. "A less delicate organization than 
his," remarks one of his acquaintances, 
**might have borne without injury what to 
him was maddening." "I have absolutely no 
pleasure in the stimulants in which I some- 
times so madly indulge, " he wrote some months 
before his death to a dear friend who tried to 
hold forth a saving hope. *'It has not been in 
the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life 
and reputation and reason. It has been in 
the desperate attempt to escape from tortur- 
ing memories — memories of wrong and in- 
justice and imputed dishonor — from a sense of 
insupportable loneliness and a dread of some 
strange impending doom." There is no ne- 
cessity for us to touch heavily upon this terrible 
trait in the character of Edgar Poe — this sad 
sickening infirmity of his "lonesome latter 
years;" his error, if such it may be styled — 
the impulse which blindly impelled him to his 
destruction — injured no one but himself; and 
certainly, no one before or since has suffered 
so severely in character in consequence of it. 
Burns, Goethe, Byron, and other children of 
genius have erred far worse than Poe ever did, 
inasmuch as their derelictions injured others, 
but with them the world has dealt leniently, 



94 MEMOIR. 

accepting their genius as a compensation. 
But for poor Edgar Poe, who wronged no one 
but himself, the world, misled greatly it is 
true as to his real character, has hitherto had 
no mercy. But the true story of his life has 
now been told ; henceforth let him be judged 
justly ; henceforth let his fev/ errors be forgot- 
ten, and to his name be assigned that place 
which is due to it in the glory-roll of fame. 

The history of Edgar Allan Poe can scarcely 
be said to have ended with his life. Two days 
after his death a cruel deprecatory notice of his 
life and works appeared in the New York Trib- 
une, and this notice, which was signed "Lud- 
wig," after declaring that the poet's decease 
*'v7ill startle many, but few will be grieved by 
it," as ''he had few or no friends," proceeds 
to furnish a sketch of Poe's life, taken pro- 
fessedly from Griswold's ''Poets and Poetry of 
America," Thanks to N. P. Willis, it trans- 
pired that this notice was by Griswold himself 
— he was the pseudonymous "Ludwig. " The 
papers were immediately flooded with disproofs 
of this characterization of Poe, and friend after 
friend came forward to defend the dead man 
against his assailant. Willis led the van with 
his well-known and already alluded to paper, 
in which he recorded his own personal knowl- 
edge of Edgar Poe, derived from five years' 
intimate acquaintanceship, Mr. George R. 
Graham, the originator and proprietor of the 
well-known Graham's Magazine, next pro- 
ceeded to denounce, in what Griswold styles 
**a sophomorical and trashy, but widely circu- 



MEMOIR. 95 

lated letter, the notice as **an immortal in- 
famy, ' ' and probably knowing better than any 
one else the position which his rival editors 
stood in with respect to one another, declared 
it to be the * 'fancy sketch of a perverted jaun- 
diced vision. " John Neal also came forward 
to assert that it was ''false and malicious,** 
and its author a ** calumniator," between 
whom and Poe existed *'a long, intense, and 
implacable enmity," that utterly disqualified 
Griswold for the post of the poet's biographer. 
Undaunted by the outcry he had created, Gris- 
wold proceeded to the manufacture of that 
masterpiece of envy, hatred, and malice, 
which, under the title of a *' Memoir of Edgar 
Poe," he atternpted to foist upon the world 
as a truthful life of America's greatest and 
most original genius. Doubted, refuted, and 
condemned, as it has been in America, where 
Griswold's own disreputable career was but 
too notorious to be ignored, the soi-disani 
** Memoir" still remains even there the only 
story of Poe's life, whilst in Europe it has been 
unwittingly and almost universally accepted 
as the truth. In France, indeed, it has been 
attacked by Baudelaire, who pointed out its 
author's evident animosity to Poe; and in 
England, Mr. Moy Thomas drew attention to 
the fact that portraitures of Poe, less repulsive 
than that given by Griswold, were in exist- 
ence ; as a rule, however, it has been received 
as a faithful story. 

In the preceding ** Memoir" an attempt has 
been made for the first time to do justice to the 



96 MEIMOIR. 

poet's memory. Many of the dark stains 
which Griswold cast upon it have been re- 
moved, and those which remain, resting as 
they do solely upon the testimony of an im- 
placable enemy, may safely be ignored as, in 
the mild words of Mrs. Whitman, ** perverted 
facts and baseless assumptions." 

It does not come within the scope of our 
present purpose to investigate the peculiarities 
of Poe's genius, or to analyze the varied excel- 
lencies of his works. There are, however, 
some misconceptions, with regard to his liter- 
ary labors which, founded as they almost 
invariably are upon Griswold's authority, we 
should like to draw attention to. Says this 
biographer, and the remark has been fre- 
quently copied, word for word, **Poe exhibits 
scarcely any virtue in either his life or his 
writings. Probably there is not another in- 
stance in the literature of our language in 
which so much has been accomplished without 
a recognition of a manifestation of con- 
science." As regards Poe's life, the world 
can now judge anew whilst, as regards his 
v/ritings, we demand in what works of fiction 
are more fully recognized and more vividly 
portrayed the unappeasable tortures and the 
immutable punishments of conscience, than in 
such tales as **The Man of the Crowd," *'The 
Tell-Tale Heart," and ^'William Wilson"— 
the very personification of conscience itself? 
Can any but wilful blindness affect to ignore 
such terrible examples of a high and unavoid- 
able retribution? Who, too, having read Poe's 



MEMOIR. 97 

writings, can adopt Griswold's dictum that 
they "never display reverence or remorse." 
No one ever expressed a greater ** reverence" 
for all that is truly great and noble than did 
Poe, whilst, as for *' remorse," it has yet to be 
proved that that was needed in his case. With 
Griswold's mere opinion, that Poe failed in 
everything he attempted, we have nothing to 
do, nor does it concern us that he deemed him 
*'not remarkably original in invention;" but 
when he proceeds to charge him with whole- 
sale robbery, and avers that "some of his plag- 
iarisms are scarcely parallel for their 
audacity," silence could not but be miscon- 
strued. Of the instances which the biographer 
gives of the alleged literary thefts of him 
whom he styles **this extraordinary creature," 
we have already examined and disproved the 
two chief, the **Conchology" and **The 
Haunted Palace" charges; and there only 
remains the accusation that "the complicate 
machinery upon which the interest depends" 
of **The Pit and the Pendulum" is borrowed 
from a story entitled **Vivenzio," which 
appeared in Blackwood's Magazine. This tale 
was published in August, 1830, and it is to be 
wished that any one placing the slightest reli- 
ance upon Griswold's credibility will compare 
the two, the only similarity being due to the 
fact that both stories derive from historical 
record the idea of a collapsing room. Mr. Mud- 
ford's tale of *'The Iron Shroud" does not bear 
the slightest resemblance in plot or treatment 
to Poe's. 

1 Foe's Poems. 



'98 MEMOIR. 

To support a general charge of inconsistency 
in Poe's criticisms, the implacable biographer 
adduces two instances; the first, referring to 
Mr. Laughton Osborn, has already been re- 
futed in our account of Poe's connection with 
the Literary Messenger, and the second, relat- 
ing to Mr. William A. Jones, it is quite as easy 
to disprove. In this latter instance, Griswold 
gives a short extract from a paper on '* Critics 
and Criticism," in which Poe awards a few 
words ot lukewarm praise to Mr. Jones, and 
in opposition to this he then quotes a few 
garbled sentences from the Broadway Journal, 
in which the same writer is condemned in no 
very measured terms. The story is too long 
and' too uninteresting for recapitulation, but 
those who are sufficiently curious to learn the 
"Whole truth can find it in full at pages i68 
and 183 of the second volume of the above 
journal: it suffices to say that Poe's published 
opinion of Mr. Jones was consistently alike 
upon the two occasions referred to. But it is 
as unnecessary as it is distasteful to pursue this 
subject further; we have saic enough to prove 
the unreliability of Griswold's *' Memoir of 
Edgar Poe," and in conclusion will content 
ourselves with reproducing Mr. Graham's in- 
teresting and oft referred to letter, as the val- 
uable and unbiased evidence of an unimpeach- 
able witness, the employer of both Poe and 
Griswold. It appears in Graham's Magazine 
for March, 1850. 

**My Dear Willis: — In an article of yours, 
which accompanies the two beautiful volumes 



MEMOIR. 99 

of the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, you have 
spoken with so much truth and delicacy of the 
deceased, and with the magical touch of genius 
have called so warmly up before me the mem- 
ory of our lost friend, as you and I both seem 
to have known him, that I feel warranted in 
addressing to you the few plain words I have 
to say in defense of his character as set down 
by Mr. Griswold. Although the article, it 
seems, appeared originally in the New York 
Tribune, it m.et my eye for the first time in the 
volumes before me. I now purpose to take 
exception to it in the most public manner. I 
knew Mr. Poe well — far better than Mr. Gris- 
wold; and by the memory of old times, when 
he was an editor of 'Graham,' I pronounce 
this exceedingly ill-timed and unappreciative 
estimate of the character of our lost friend 
unfair and untrue. It is Mr. Poe, as seen by 
the writer while laboring under a fit of the 
nightmare; but so dark a picture has no re- 
semblance to the living man. Accompanying 
these beautiful volumes, it is an immortal — 
the death's head over the entrance to the gar- 
den of beauty—a , horror that clings to the 
brow of morning, whispering of murder. It 
haunts the memory through every page of his 
writings, leaving upon the heart a sensation 
of utter gloom, a feeling almost of terror. 
The only relief we feel is in knowing that it is 
not true — that it is a fancy sketch of a per- 
verted, jaundiced vision. The man who could 
deliberately say of Edgar Allan Poe, in a 
notice of his life and writings, prefacing the 



100 MEMOIR. 

volumes which were to become a priceless 
souvenir to all who loved him — that his death 
might startle many, 'but that few would be 
grieved by it' — and blast the whole fame of 
the man by such a paragraph as follows, is a 
judge dishonored. He is not Mr. Poe's peer, 
and I challenge him before the country, even 
as a juror in the case. 

" 'His harsh experience had deprived him of all faith 
in man or woman. He had made up his mind upon the 
numberless complexities of the social world, and the 
whole system with him was an imposture. This con- 
viction gave a direction to his shrewd and naturally 
unamiable character. Still, though he regarded society 
as composed altogether of villains, the sharpness of his 
intellect was not of that kind which enabled him to cope 
with villainy while it continually caused him by over- 
shots to fail of the success of honesty. He was in many 
respects like Francis Vivian in Bulwer's novel of "The 
Caxtons." Passion, in him, comprehended many of the 
worst emotions which militate against human happi- 
ness. You could not contradict him, but you raised 
quick choler; you could not speak of wealth, but his 
cheek paled with gnawing envy. The astonishing nat- 
ural advantages of this poor boy — his beauty, his read- 
iness, the daring spirit that breathed around him like a 
fiery atmosphere— had raised his constitutional self-con- 
fidence into an arrogance that turned his very claims to 
admiration into prejudices against him. Irascible, 
envious — bad enough, but not the worst, for these salient 
angles were all varnished over with a cold repellant 
cynicism, his passions vented themselves in sneers. 
There seemed to him no more susceptibility ; and what 
was more remarkable in a proud nature, little or nothing 
of the true point of honor. He had, to a morbid excess, 
that desire to rise which is vulgarly called ambition, but 
no wish for the esteem or the love of the species; only 
the hard wish to succeed — not shine, nor serve — suc- 
ceed, that he might have the right to despise a world 
which galled his self-conceit.' 



MEMOIR. 101 

**Now, this is dastardly, and what is worse, 
it is false. It is very adroitly done, with 
phrases very well turned, and with gleams of 
truth shining out from a setting so dusky as 
to look devilish, Mr. Griswold does not feel 
the worth of the man he has undervalued — he 
had no sympathies in common with him, and 
has allowed old prejudices and old enmities to 
steal, insensibly perhaps, into the coloring of 
his picture. They were for years totally un- 
congenial, if not enemies, and during that 
period Mr. Poe, in a scathing lecture upon 
'The Poets of America,' gave Mr. Griswold 
some raps over the knuckles of force sufficient 
to be remembered. He had, too, in the exer- 
cise of his functions as critic, put to death 
summarily the literary reputation of some of 
Mr. Griswold 's best friends; and their ghosts 
cried in vain for him to avenge them during 
Poe's lifetime — and it almost seems as if the 
present hacking at the cold remains of him 
who struck them down is a sort of compensa- 
tion for duty long delayed — for reprisal long 
desired but deferred. But without this — the 
opportunities afforded Mr. Griswold to esti- 
mate the character of Poe occurred, in the 
main, after his stability had been wrecked, his 
whole nature in a degree changed, and with 
all his prejudices aroused and active. Nor do 
I consider Mr. Griswold competent — with all 
the opportunities he may have cultivated or 
acquired — to act as his judge — to dissect that 
subtle and singularly fine intellect — to probe 
the motives and weigh the actions of that 



102 MEMOIR. 

proud heart. His whole nature — that distinc- 
tive presence of the departed which now stands 
impalpable, yet in strong outline before me, 
as I knew him and felt him to be — eludes the 
rude grasp of a mind so warped and uncon- 
genial as Mr. Griswold's. 

"But it may be said, my dear Willis, that 
Mr. Poe himself deputed him to act as his 
literary executor, and that he must have felt 
some confidence in his ability at least—if not 
in his integrity to perform the functions im- 
posed with discretion and honor. I do not 
purpose, now, to enter into any examination 
of the appointment of Mr. Griswold — nor of 
the wisdom of his appointment — to the solemn 
trust of handing the fair fame of the deceased 
unimpaired to that posterity to which the 
dying poet bequeathed his legacy — but simply 
to question its faithful performance. Among 
the true friends of Poe in this city — and he 
had some such here — there are those I am sure 
that he did not class am^ong villains; nor did 
they feel easy when they see their old friend 
dressed out, in his grave, in the habiliments 
of a scoundrel. There is something to them, 
in this mode of procedure on the part of the 
literary executor, that does not chime in with 
their notions of 'the true point of honor.' They 
had all of them looked upon our departed 
friend as singularly indifferent to wealth for 
its own sake, but as very positive in his opin- 
ions that the scale of social merit was not of 
the highest — that Mind, somehow, was apt to 
be left out of the estimate altogether — and 



MEMOIR. 103 

partaking somewhat of his free way of think- 
ing, his friends are startled to find they have 
entertained very unamiable convictions. As 
to his 'quick choler' when he v/as contradicted, 
it depended a good deal upon the party deny- 
ing, as well as upon the subject discussed. He 
was quick, it is true, to perceive mere quacks 
in literature, and somewhat apt to be hasty 
when pestered v/ith them; but upon most 
other questions his natural amiability was not 
easily disturbed. Upon a subject that he un- 
derstood thoroughly he felt some right to be 
positive, if not arrogant, when addressing pre- 
tenders. His 'astonishing natural advantages' 
had been very assiduously cultivated — his 
daring spirit was the anointed of genius — his 
self-confidence the proud conviction of both — 
and it was with something of a lofty scorn that 
he attacked, as well as repelled, a crammed 
scholar of the hour, who attempted to palm 
upon him his ill-digested learning. Literature 
with him was religion; and he, its high-priest, 
with a whip of scorpions scourged the money- 
changers from the temple. In all else he had 
the docility and kind-heartedness of a child. 
No man was more quickly touched by a kind- 
ness — none m.ore prompt to atone for an in- 
jury. For three or four years I knew him 
intimately, and for eighteen months saw him 
almost daily; much of the time writing or 
conversing at the same desk; knowing all his 
hopes, his fears, and little annoyances of life, 
as well as his high-hearted struggle with ad- 
verse fate — yet he was always the same pel- 



104 MEMOIR. 

ished gentleman — the quiet unobtrusive, 
thoughtful scholar — the devoted husband — 
frugal in his personal expenses-— punctual and 
unwearied in his industry — and the soul of 
honor in all his transactions. This, of course, 
was in his better days, and by them we judge 
the man. But even after his habits had 
changed, there was no literary man to whom I 
would more readily advance money for labor 
to be done. He kept his accounts, small as 
they were, with the accuracy of a banker. I 
append an account sent to me in his own hand 
long after he had left Philadelphia, and after 
all knowledge of the transactions it recited 
had escaped my memory. I had returned him 
the story of 'The Gold Bug,' at his own re- 
quest, as he found that he could dispose of it 
very advantageously elsewhere. 

" 'We were square when I sold you the "Versi- 
fication" article; for which you gave me first 
$25, and afterwards $7 — in all - - - $32 00 
Then you bought the "Gold Bug" for - - 52 00 

1 got both these back, so that I owed - - $84 00 
You lent Mrs. Clemm -12 50 

Making in all - - - - - - - $96 50 

The review of "Flaccus" was 3l4fpp., which, 

at $4, is $15 00 

Lowell's poem is - - - - - 10 00 
The review of Channing, 4 pp., is $16, of 

which 1 got $6, leaving - - - 10 00 
The review of Halleck, 4 pp., is $i6, of 

which I got $10, leaving - • - - 6 00 
The review of Reynolds, 2 pp. - - - 8 00 



MEMOIR. 105 

f ^ 

The review of Longfellow, 5 pp., is $20, of 
which I got $10, leaving - - - • 10 00 

So I paid in all '__ 59 00 

Which leaves still due by me - - - $37 50 

1 "This, I find was his uniform habit with 
others as well as myself— carefully recalling 
to mind his indebtedness, with the fresh ar- 
ticle sent. And this is the man who had 'no 
moral susceptibility,' and little or nothing of 
the *true point of honor.' It may be a very 
plain business view of the question, but it 
strikes his friends that it may pass as some- 
thing as times go. 

''I shall never forget how solicitous of the 
happiness of his wife and mother-in-law he 
was, whilst one of the editors of Graham's 
Magazine— his whole efforts seemed to be to 
procure the comfort and welfare of his home. 
Except for their happiness— and the natural 
ambition of having a magazine of his own— I 
never heard him deplore the want of wealth. 
The truth is, he cared little for money, and 
knew less of its value, for he seemed to have 
no personal expenses. What he received from 
me in regular monthly installments went 
directly into the hands of his mother-in-law 
for family comforts— and twice only I remem- 
ber his purchasing some rather expensive lux- 
uries for his house, and then he was nervous 
to the degree of misery until he had, by extra 
articles, covered what he considered an impru- 
dent indebtedness. His love for his wife was 

3 Fee's Poems. 



106 MEMOIR. 

a sort of rapturous worship of the spirit of 
beauty which he felt was fading before his 
eyes. I have seen him hovering around her 
when she was ill, with all the fond fear and 
tender anxiety of a mother of her first-born — 
her slightest cough causing him a shudder, a 
heart-chill that was visible. I rode out one 
summer evening with them, and the remem- 
brance of his watchful eyes, eagerly bent upon 
the slightest change of hue in that loved face, 
haunts me yet as the memory of a sad strain. 
It was this hourly anticipation of her loss that 
made him a sad and thoughtful man and lent 
a mournful melody to his undying song. 

**It is true that later in life Poe had much of 
those morbid feelings which a life of poverty 
and disappointment is so apt to engender in 
the heart of man — the sense of having been 
ill-used, misunderstood, and put aside by men 
of far less ability and of none, which preys 
upon the heart and clouds the brain of many a 
child of song: a consciousness of the inequali- 
ties of life and of the abundant power of mere 
wealth allied even to vulgarity to over-ride all 
distinctions, and to thrust itself bedaubed with 
dirt and glittering with tinsel into the high 
places of society, and the chief seats of the 
synagogue ; whilst he, a worshiper of the beau- 
tiful and true, who listened to the voices of 
angels, and held delighted companionslHp with 
them as the cold throng swept disdainfully by 
him, was often in danger of being thrust out 
houseless, homeless, beggared upon the world, 
with all his fine feelings strung to a tension of 



MEMOIR. 107 

agony when he thought of his beautiful and 
delicate wife dying hourly before his eyes. 
What wonder that he then poured out the 
vials of a long- treasured bitterness upon the 
injustice and hollowness of all society around 
him? 

"The very natural question — 'Why did he 
not work and thrive?' is easily answered. It 
will not be asked by the many who know the 
precarious tenure by which literary men hold a 
mere living in this country. The avenues 
through which they can profitably reach the 
country are few, and crowded with aspirants 
for bread as well as fame. The unfortunate 
tendency to cheapen every literary work to the 
lowest point of beggarly flimsiness in price 
and profit prevents even the well-disposed 
from extending anything like an adequate sup- 
port to even a part of the great throng which 
genius, talent, education, and even misfortune 
force into the struggle. The character of 
Poe's mind was of such an order as not to be 
very widely in demand. The class of educated 
mind which he could readily and profitably 
address was small — the channels through 
which he could do so at all were few — and 
publishers all, or nearly all, contented with such 
pens as were already engaged, hesitated to incur 
the expense of his to an extent which would 
sufficiently remunerate him ; hence, when he 
was fairly at sea, connected permanently with 
no publication, he sufiEered all the horrors of 
prospective destitution, with scarcely the abil- 
ity of providing for immediate necessities; and 



108 MEMOIR. 

at such moments, alas! the tempter often came, 
and as you have truly said, 'one glass' of wine 
made him a madman. Let the moralist who 
stands upon * tufted carpet,' and surveys his 
smoking board, the fruits of his individual toil 
or mercantile adventure, pause before he lets 
the anathema, trembling upon his lips, fall 
upon a man like Poe! who, wandering from 
publisher to publisher, with his fine print-like 
manuscript, scrupulously clean and neatly 
rolled, finds no market for his brain — with 
despair at heart, misery ahead for himself and 
his loved ones, and gaunt famine dogging at 
his heels, thus sinks by the wayside, before 
the demon that watches his steps and whispers 
oblivion. Of all the miseries which God, or 
his own vices, inflict upon man, none are so 
terrible as that of having the strong and will- 
ing arm struck down to a child-like inefficiency, 
while the Heart and Will have the purpose 
and force of a giant's outdoing. We must re- 
member, too, that the very organization of 
such a mind as that of Poe — the very tension 
and tone of his exquisitely strung nerves — the 
passionate yearnings of his soul for the beauti- 
ful and true, utterly unfitted him for the rude 
jostlings and fierce competitorship of trade. 
The only drafts of his that could be honored 
were those upon his brain. The unpeopled 
air — the caverns of ocean — the decay and mys- 
tery that hang around old castles — the thunder 
of wind through the forest aisles — the spirits 
that rode the blast, by all but him unseen — 
and the deep metaphysical creations which 



MEMOIR. 109 

floated througfh the chambers of his soul were 
his only wealth, the High Change where only 
his signature was valid for rubies. 

*' Could he have stepped down and chron- 
icled small beer, made himself the shifting 
toady of the hour, and with bow and cringe hung 
upon the steps of greatness, sounding the glory 
of third-rate ability with a penny trumpet, he 
would have been feted alive and perhaps been 
praised when dead. But no ! his views of the 
duties of the critic were stern, and he felt that 
in praising an unworthy writer he committed 
dishonor. His pen was regulated by the high- 
est sense of duty. By a keen analysis he sepa- 
rated and studied each piece which the skillful 
mechanist had put together. No part, how- 
ever insignificant, or apparently unimportant, 
escaped the rigid and patient scrutiny of his 
sagacious mind. The unfitted joint proved the 
bungler — the slightest blemish was a palpable 
fraud. He was the scrutinizing lapidary, who 
detected and exposed the most minute flaw 
in diamonds. The gem of first water shone the 
brighter for the truthful setting of his calm 
praise. He had the finest touch of soul for 
beauty — a delicate and hearty appreciation of 
worth. If his praise appeared tardy, it was of 
priceless value when given. It was true as 
well as sincere. It was the stroke of honor 
that at once knighted the receiver. It was in 
the world of mind that he was king; and with 
a fierce audacity he felt and proclaimed him- 
self autocrat. As critic he was Despotic, 
Supreme. Yet no man with more readiness 



110 MEMOIR. 

would soften a harsh expression at the request 
of a friend, or if he himself felt that he had 
infused too great a degree of bitterness into 
his article, none would more readily soften it 
down after it was in type — though still main- 
taining the justness of his critical views. I do 
not believe that he wrote to give pain ; but in 
combating what he conceived to be error, he 
used the strongest word that presented itself, 
even in conversation. He labored not so 
much to reform as to exterminate error, and 
thought the shortest process was to pull it up 
by the roots. 

'*He was a worshiper of intellect — longing 
to grasp the power of mind that moves the 
stars — to bathe his' soul in the dreams of ser- 
aphs. He was himself all ethereal, of a fine 
essence, th it moved in an atmosphere of 
spirits — of spiritual beauty overflowing and 
radiant — twin brother with the angels, feeling 
their flashing wings upon his heart, and almost 
clasping them in his embrace. Of them, and 
as an expectant archangel of that high order 
of intellect, stepping out of himself as it were, 
and interpreting the time he reveled in deli- 
cious luxury in a world beyond, with an audac- 
ity which we fear in madmen, but in genius 
worship as the inspiration of heaven. 

"But my object in throwing together a few 
thoughts upon the character of Edgar Allan 
Poe was not to attempt an elaborate criticism, 
but to say what might palliate grave faults 
that have been attributed to him, and to meet 
by facts unjust accusation — in a word, to give 



MEMOIR. Ill 

a mere outline of the man as he lived before 
me. I think I am warranted in saying to Mr. 
Griswold, that he must review his decision. 
It will not stand the calm scrutiny of his own 
judgment, or of time, while it must be re- 
garded by all the friends of Mr. Poe as an ill- 
judged and misplaced calumny upon that 
gifted Son of G«nius. 

** Yours truly, 

•'Geo. R. Graham. 
"Philadelphia, Feb. 2, 1850. 

**ToN, P. Willis, Esq.'* 



DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE. 



BY N. P. WILLIS. 



The ancient fable of two antagonistic spirits 
imprisoned in one body equally powerful and 
having the complete mastery by turns — of one 
man that is to say, inhabited by both a devil 
and an angel — seems to have been realized, if 
all we hear is true, in the character of the ex- 
traordinary man whose name we have written 
above. Our own impression of the nature of 
Edgar A. Poe differs in some important degree, 
however, from that which has been generally 
conveyed in the notices of his death. Let us, 
before telling what we personally know of him, 
copy a graphic and highly finished portraiture, 
from the pen of Dr. Rufus W. Griswoid, which 
appeared in a recent number of the Tribune : — 

"Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore on 
Sunday, October 7th. This announcement will startle 
many, but few will be grieved by it. The poet was 
known, personally or by reputation, in all this country ; 
he had readers in England, and in several of the states 
of Continental Europe; but he had few or no friends; 
and the regrets for his deatji will be suggested princi- 
pally by the consideration that in him literary art has 
lost one of its most brilliant but erratic stars." . . . 

"His conversation was at times almost super-mortal 
in its eloquence. His voice was modulated with aston- 
ishing skill, and his large and variably expressive eyes 
looked repose or shot fiery tumult into theirs who lis* 
113 



114 DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE/ 

tened, while his own face glowed, or was changeless in 
pallor, as his imagination quickened his blood or drew 
it back frozen to his heart. His imagery was from 
the worlds which no mortals can see but with the vision 
of genius. — Suddenly starting from a proposition, ex- 
actly and sharply defined, in terms of utmost simplicity 
and clearness, he rejected the forms of customary logic, 
and by a crystalline process of accretion, built up his 
ocular demonstrations in forms of gloomiest and ghast- 
liest grandeur, or in those of the most airy and delicious 
beauty — so minutely and distinctly, yet so rapidly, that 
the attention which was yielded to him was chained till 
it stood among his wonderful creations — till he himself 
dissolved the spell, and brought his hearers back to com- 
mon and base existence, by vulgar fancies or exhibitions 
of the ignoblest passion. 

"He was at all times a dreamer — dwelling in ideal 
realms — in heaven or hell — peopled with the creatures 
and the accidents of his brain. He walked the streets, 
in madness or melancholy, with lips moving in indis- 
tinct curses, or with eyes upturned in passionate prayer 
(never for himself, for he felt, or professed to feel, that 
he was already damned, but) for their happiness who at 
the moment were objects of his idolatry; — or, with his 
glances introverted to a heart gnawed with anguish, 
and with a face shrouded in gloom, he would brave the 
wildest storma; and all night, -with drenched garments 
and arms beating the winds and rains, would speak as 
if to spirits that at such times only could be evoked by 
him from the Aidenn, close by whose portals his dis- 
turbed soul sought to forget the ills to which his ©onsti- 
tution subjected him — close by the Aidenn where were 
those he loved:— The Aidenn which he might never see, 
but in fitful glimpses, as its gates opened to receive the 
less fiery and more happy natures whose destiny to sin 
did not involve the doom of death. 

"He seemed, except when some fitful pursuit subju- 
gated his will and engrossed his faculties, always to 
bear the memory ot some controlling sorrow. The re- 
markable poem of The Raven was probably much more 
nearly than has been supposed, even by those who were 
very intimate with him, a reflection and an echo of his 
own history. He was that bird's 



DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE. 115 

** ' unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster 

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one 

burden bore — 
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden 
bore 

Of "Never — never more." * 

*'Every genuine author in a greater or less degree 
leaves in his works, whatever their design, traces of his 
personal character; elements of his immortal being, in 
which the individual survives the person. While we 
read the pages of the Fall of the House of Usher or of 
Mesmeric Revelations, we see in the solemn and stately 
gloom which invests one, and in the subtle metaphysical 
analysis of both, indications .of the idiosyncrasies — of 
what was most remarkable and peculiar — in the author's 
intellectual nature. But we see here only the better 
phases of his nature, only the symbols of his juster ac- 
tion, for his harsh experience had deprived him of all 
faith, in man or woman. He had made up his mind 
upon the numberless complexities of the social world, 
and the whole system v/ith him was an imposture. This 
conviction gave a direction to his shrewd and naturally 
unamiable character. Still, though he regarded society 
as composed altogether of villains, the sharpness of his 
intellect was not of that kind which enabled him to cope 
with villainy, while it continually caused him by over- 
shots to fail of the success of honesty. Ke v/as in many 
respects like Francis Vivian in Bulwcr's novel of 'The 
Caxtons.' Passion in him comprehended many of the 
worst emotions which militate against human happi- 
ness. You could not contradict him, but you raised 
quick choler; you could not speak of wealth, but his 
cheek paled with gnawing envy. The astonishing 
natural advantages of this poor boy — his beauty, his 
readiness, the daring spirit that breathed around him 
like a fiery atmosphere — had raised his constitutional 
self-confidence into an arrogance that turned his very 
claims to admiration into prejudices against him. Iras- 
cible, envious— bad enough, but not the worst, for these 
salient angles were'all varnished over with a cold, repel- 
lent cynicism, his passions vented themselves in sneers* 



116 jJEATH OF EDGAR A. POE. 

There seemed to him no moral susceptibility ; and, what 
was more remarkable in a proud nature, little or nothing 
of the true point of honor. He had, to a morbid excess, 
that desire to rise which is vulgarly called ambition, but 
no wish for the esteem or the love of his species ; only 
the hard wish to succeed — not shine, not serve — succeed 
that he might have the right to despise a world which 
galled his self-conceit. 

"We have suggested the influence of his arms and 
vicissitudes upon his literature. It was more conspicu- 
ous in his later than in his earlier writings. Nearly all 
that he wrote in the last two or three years — including 
much of his best poetry — was in some sense biographi- 
cal ; in draperies of hi -. imagination, those who had 
taken the trouble to trace his steps, could perceive, but 
slightly concealed, the figure of himself." 

Apropos of the disparaging portion of the 
above well-written sketch, let us truthfully 
say: — 

Some four or five years since, when editing 
a daily paper in this city, Mr. Poe was em- 
ployed by us, for several months, as critic and 
sub-editor. This was our first personal ac- 
quaintance with him. He resided with his 
wife and mother at Fordham, a few miles out 
of town, but was at his desk in the office, from 
nine in the morning till the evening paper 
went to press. With the highest admiration 
for his genius, and a willingness to let it atone 
for more than ordinary irregularity, we were 
led by common report to expect a very capri- 
cious attention to his duties, and occasionally 
a scene of violence and difficulty. Time went 
on, however, and he was invariably punctual 
and industrious. With his pale, beautiful, 
and intellectual face, as a reminder of what 



DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE. 117 

genius was in him, it was impossible, of course, 
not to treat him always with deferential 
courtesy, and, to our occasional request that 
he would not probe too deep in a criticism, or 
that he would erase a passage colored too 
highly with his resentments against society and 
mankind, he readily and courteously assented 
— far more yielding than most men, we 
thought, on points so excusably sensitive. 
With a prospect of taking the lead in another 
periodical, he at last voluntarily gave up his 
employment with us, and, through all this con- 
siderable period, we had seen but one present- 
ment of the man — a quiet, patient, industrious, 
and most gentlemanly person, commanding 
the utmost respect and good feeling by his 
unvarying deportment and ability. 

Residing as he did in the country, we never 
met Mr. Poe in hours of leisure ; but he fre- 
quently called on us afterward at our place of 
business, and we met him often in the street — 
invariably the same sad-mannered, winning, 
and refined gentleman, such as we had always 
known him. It was by rumor only, up to the 
day of his death, that we knew of any other 
development of manner or character. We 
heard, from one who knew him well (what 
should be stated in all mention of his lament- 
able irregularities), that, with a single glass of 
wine, his whole nature was reversed, the 
demon became uppermost, and, though none 
of the usual signs of intoxication were visible, 
his will was palpably insane. Possessing his 
reasoning faculties in excited activity, at such 



118 DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE. 

times, and seeking his acquaintances with his 
wonted look and memory, he easily seemed 
personating only another phase of his natural 
character, and was accused, accordingly, of 
insulting arrogance and bad-heartedness. In 
this reversed character, we repeat, it was never 
our chance to see him. We know it from 
heresay, and we mention it in connection with 
this sad infirmity of physical constitution; 
which puts it upon very nearly the ground of 
a temporary and almost irresponsible insanity. 
The arrogance, vanity, and depravity of 
heart, of which Mr. Poewas gene-ally accused, 
seemed to us referrable altogether to this rev- 
ersed phase of his character. Under that 
degree of intoxication which only acted upon 
him by demonizing his sense of truth and 
right, he doubtless said and did much that was 
wholly irreconcilable with his better nature; 
but, when himself, and as we knew him only, 
his modesty and unaffected humility, as to his 
own deservings, were a constant charm to his 
character. His letters (of which the constant 
application for autographs has taken from us, 
we are sorry to confess, the greater portion) 
exliibited this quality very strongly. In one 
of the carelessly written notes of which we 
chance still to retain possession, for instance, 
he speaks of "The Raven" — that extraordinary 
poem which electrified the world of imagina- 
tive readers, and has become the type of a 
school of poetry of its own — and, in evident 
earnest, attributes its success to the few words 
of commendation with which we had prefacec? 



DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE. 119 

it in this paper. It will throw light on his 
same character to give a literal copy of the 
note: — 

"FoRDHAM, April 20, 1849. 

"My Dear Willis: — The poem which I enclose, and 
which I am so vain as to hope you will like in some 
respects, has been just published in a paper for which 
sheer necessity compoV. rne to write, now and then. 
It pays well as timt-s ,^ — but unquestionably it ought 
to pay ten prices; for whatever I send it I feel I am 
consigning to the tomb of the Capulets. The verses 
accompanying this, may I beg you to take out of the 
tomb, and bring them to light in the Home Journal? It 
you can oblige me so far as to copy them, I do not think 

it will be necessary to say 'From the , — that would 

be too bad; — and, perhaps, 'From a late paper,* 

would do. 

"I have not forgotten how a 'good word in season' 
from you made 'The Raven,' and made 'Ulalume' 
(which, by the way, people have done me the honor of 
attributing to you) — therefore I would ask you (if I 
dared) to say something of these lines — if they please 
you. "Truly yours ever, 

"Edgar A. Poe." 

In double proof — of his earnest disposition 
to do the best for himself, and as the trustful 
and grateful nature which has been denied 
him — we give another of the only three of his 
notes which we chance to retain : — 

"FoRDHAM, January 22, 1848. 

"My Dear Mr. Willis: — I am about to make an 
effort at re-establishing myself in the literary world, 
and feel that I may depend upon your aid. 

"My general aim is to start a Magazine, to be called 
'The Stylus;' but it would be'useless to me, eveu when 
established, if not entirely out of the control of a pub- 
lisher. I mean, therefore, to get up a Journal which 
shall be my own, at all points. With this end in view, 



120 DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE. 

I must get a list of, at least, five hundred subscribers to 
begin with: — nearly two hundred I have already. I 
propose, however, to go South and West, among my 
personal and literary friends — old college and West 
Point acquaintances — and see what I can do. In order 
to get the means of taking the first step, I propose to 
lecture at the Society Library on Thursday, the 3d ot 
February — and, that there may be no cause of squab- 
bling, my subject shall not be literary at all. I have 
chosen a broad text — 'The Universe.' 

"Having thus given you the facts of the case, I leave 
all the rest to the suggestions of your own tact and 
generosity. Gratefully — most gratefully — 

"Your friend always, 

"Edgar A. Poe." 

Brief and chance-taken as these letters are, 
we think they sufficiently prove the existence 
of the very qualities denied to Mr. Poe — ■ 
humility, willingness to persevere, belief in 
another's kindness, and capability of cordial 
and grateful friendship! Such he assuredly 
was when sane. Such only he has invariably 
seemed to us, in all we have happened person- 
ally to know of him, through a friendship of 
five or six years. And so much easier is it to 
believe what we have seen and known, than 
what we hear of only, that we remember him 
but with admiration and respect — these 
descriptions of him, when morally insane, 
seeming to us like portraits, painted in sick- 
ness, of a man we have only known in health. 

But there is another, more touching, and far 
more forcible evidence that there was goodness 
in Edgar A. Poe. To reveal it, we are obliged 
to venture upon the lifting of the veil which 
sacredly covers grief and refinement in povert 



DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE. 121 

— hnt we think it may be excused, if so we can 
brighten the memory of the poet, even were 
there not a more needed and immediate service 
which it may render to the nearest link broken 
by his death. 

Our first knowledge of Mr. Poe's removal to 
this city was by a call which we received from 
a lady who introduced herself to us as the 
mother of his wife. She was in search of 
employment for him, and she excused her 
errand by mentioning that he was ill, that her 
daughter was a confirmed invalid, and that 
their circumstances were such as compelled 
her taking it upon herself. The countenance 
of this lady, made beautiful and saintly with 
an evidently complete giving up of her life to 
privation and sorrowful tenderness, her gentle 
and mournful voice urging its plea, her long- 
forgotten but habitually and unconsciously 
refined manners, and her appealing and yet 
appreciative mention of the claims and abilities 
of her son, disclosed at once the presence of 
one of those angels upon earth that women in 
adversity can be. It was a hard fate that she 
was watching over. Mr. Poe wrote with fas- 
tidious difficulty, and in a style too much above 
the popular level to be well paid. He was 
always in pecuniary difficulty, with his sick 
wife, frequently in want of the merest neces- 
saries of life. Winter after winter, for years, 
the most touching sight to us, in this whole 
city, has been that tireless minister to genius, 
thinly and insufficiently clad, going from office 
to office with a poem, or an article on some 



122 DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE. 

literary subject, to sell — sometimes simply 
pleading" in a broken voice that he was ill, and 
begging- for him — mentioning nothing but 
that *'he was ill," whatever might be the rea- 
son for his writing nothing — and never, amid 
all her tears and recitals of distress, suffering 
one syllable to escape her lips that could con- 
vey a doubt of him, or a complaint, or a 
lessening of pride in his genius and good inten- 
tions. Her daughter died, a year and a half 
since, but she did not desert him. She contin- 
ued his ministering angel — living with him — 
caring for hi-ra — guarding him against expos- 
ure, and, w4ien he was carried away by tempta- 
tion, amid grief and the loneliness of feelings 
unrepliedto, and awoke from his self-abandon- 
ment prostrated in destitution and suffering, 
begging for him still. If woman's devotion 
born with a first love, and fed with human 
passion, hallow its object, as it is allowed to 
do, what does not a devotion like this pure, 
disinterested, and holy as the watch of an 
invisible spirit — say for him who inspired it. 

We have a letter before us, written by this 
lady, Mrs. Clemm, on the morning in which she 
heard of the death of this object of her untir- 
ing care. It is merely a request that we would 
call upon her, but we will copy a few of its 
words — sacred as its privacy is — to warrant the 
truth of the picture we have drawn above, and 
add force to the appeal we wish to make for her: 

"I have this morning heard of the death of my darling 

Eddie Can you give me any circumstances or 

particulars? .... Oh ! do not desert your poor friend 



DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE. 123 

in this bitter affliction. , . . Ask Mr. to come, as 

I must deliver a message to him from my poor Eddie. 
.... I need not ask you to notice his death and to 
ppeak well of him. I know you will. But say what an 
p,ffectionate son he was to me, his poor desolate 
mother." .... 

To hedge round a grave with respect, what 
choice is there, between the relinquished 
wealth and honors of the world, and the story 
of such a woman's unrewarded devotion? 
Risking what we do, in delicacy, by making it 
public, we feel — other reasons aside — that it 
betters the world to make known that there are 
such ministrations to its erring and gifted. 
What we have said will speak to some hearts. 
There are those who will be glad to know how 
the lamp, whose light of poverty has beamed 
on their far-away recoornition, was watched 
over with care and pain — that they may send 
to her, who is more darkened than they by its 
extinction, some token of their sympathy. 
She is destitute, and alone. If any, far or 
near, will send to us what may aid and cheer 
her through the remainder of her life, we will 
joyfully place it in her hands. 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



In speaking of the Poetic Principle, I have 
no design to be either thorough or profound. 
While discussing, very much at random, th6 
essentiality of v/hat we call Poetry, my princi- 
pal purpose will be to cite, for consideration, 
some few of those minor English or American 
poems which best suit my own taste, or which 
upon my own fancy have left the most definite 
impressions. By "minor poems" I mean, of 
course, poems of little length. And here, in 
the beginning, permit me to say a few worda 
in regard to a somewhat peculiar principle, 
which, whether rightfully or wrongfully, has 
always had its influence in my own critical 
estimate of the poem. I hold that a long 
poem does not exist. I maintain that the 
phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contra- 
diction in terms. 

I need scared}^ observe that a poem deserves 
its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevat- 
ing the soul. The value of the poem is in the 
ratio of this elevating excitement. But all 
excitements are, through a psychical necessity, 
transient. That degree of excitement which 
would entitle a poem to be so called at all, can- 
not be sustained throughout a composition of 
any great length. After the lapse of half an 
hour, at the very utmost, it flags — fails— ,a 
125 



126 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

revulsion ensues — and then the poem is in 
effect, and in fact, no longer such. 

There are, no doubt, many who have found 
difficulty in reconciling the critical dictum 
that the "Paradise Lost" is to be devoutly 
admired throughout, with the absolute impos- 
sibility of maintaining for it, during perusal, 
the amount of enthusiasm which that critical 
dictum would demand. This great work, in 
fact, is to be regarded as poetical only when, 
losing sight of that vital requisite in all works 
of Art, Unity, we view it merely as a series of 
minor poems. If, to preserve its Unity — its 
totality of effect of impression, — we read it 
(as would be necessary) at a single sitting, 
the result is but a constant alternation of ex- 
citement and depression. After a passage of 
what we feel to be true poetry, there follows, 
inevitably, a passage of platitude which no 
critical prejudgment can force us to admire; 
but if, upon completing the work, we read it 
again, omitting the first book — that is to say, 
commencing with the second — we shall be sur- 
prised at now finding that admirable which we 
before condemned — that damnable which we 
had previously so much admired. It follows 
from all this that the ultimate, ai>gregate, or 
absolute effect of even the best ejJic under the 
sun is a nullity: — and this is precisely the 
fact. 

In regard to the *' Iliad," we have, if not 
positive proof, at least very good reason, for 
believing it intended as a series of lyrics ; but, 
granting the epic intention, I can say only 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 121 

that the work is based on an imperfect sense 
of Art. The modern epic is, of the supposi- 
titious ancient model, but an inconsiderate and 
blindfold imitation. But the day of these 
artistic anomalies is over. If, at any time, 
any very long poem were popular in reality — 
which I doubt — it is at least clear that no very 
long poem will ever be popular again. 

That the extent of a poetical work is ceteris 
paribus^ the measure of its merit, seems un- 
doubtedly, when we thus state it, a proposition 
sufficiently absurd — yet we are indebted for 
it to the Quarterly Reviews. Surely there 
can be nothing in mere size, abstractly consid- 
ered — there can be nothing in mere bulk, so 
far as a volume is concerned, which has so 
continuously elicited admiration from these 
saturnine pamphlets! A mountain, to be sure, 
by the mere sentiment of physical magnitude 
which it conveys, does impress us with a sense 
of the sublime — but no man is impressed after 
this fashion by the material grandeur of even 
*'The Columbiad." Even the Quarterlies 
have not instructed us to be so impressed by 
it. As yet, they have not insisted on our esti- 
mating Lamartine by the cubic foot, or Pollock 
by the pound — but what else are we to infer 
from their continual prating about "sustained 
effort"? If, by "sustained effort," any little 
gentleman has accomplished an epic, let us 
frankly commend him for the effort — if this 
indeed be a thing commendable — but let us 
forbear praising the epic on the effort's account. 
It is to be hoped that common sense, in the 



128 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

time to come, will prefer deciding upon a work 
of Art, rather by the impression it makes — by 
the effect it produces — than by the time it took 
to impress the effect, or by the amount of 
* 'sustained effort" which had been found nec- 
essary in effecting the impression. The effort 
is, that perseverance is one thing and genius 
quite another — nor can all the Quarterlies in 
Christendom confound them. By and by, this 
proposition, with many which I have been just 
urging, will be received as self-evident. In 
the mean time, by being generally condemned 
as falsities, they will not be essentially dam- 
aged as truths. 

On the other hand, it is clear that a poem 
may be improperly brief. Undue brevity 
degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A 
very short poem, while now and then produc- 
ing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a pro- 
found or enduring effect. There must be the 
steady pressing down of the stamp upon the 
wax. De Beranger has wrought innumerable 
things, pungent and spirit-stirring; but, in 
general, they have been too imponderous to 
stamp themselves deeply into the public atten- 
tion ; and thus, as so many feathers of fancy, 
have been blown aloft only to be whistled 
down the wind. 

A remarkable instance of the effect of undue 
brevity in depressing a poem — in keeping it out 
of the popular view — is afforded by the follow 
ing exquisite little Serenade: 

I arise from dreams of thee 
In the first sweet sleep of night, 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 120 

When the winds are breathing low. 
And the stars are shining bright. 

I arise from dreams of thee, 
And a spirit in my feet 

Has led me — who knows how? — 
To thy chamber- window, sweet f 

The wandering airs they faint 

On the dark, the silent stream — 
The champak odors fall 

Like sweet thoughts in a dream j 
The nightingale's complaint, 

It dies upon her heart. 
As I must die on thine, 

O, beloved as thou art! 

O, lift me from the grass! 

I die, I faint, I fail ! 
Let thy love in kisses rain 

On my lips and eyelids pale. 
My cheek is cold and white, alas! 

My heart beats loud and fast: 
Oh ! press it close to thine again, 

Where it will break at last ! 

Very few perhaps, are familiar with these 
lines — yet no less a poet than Shelley is their 
author. Their warm, yet delicate and ethereal 
imagination will be appreciated by all — but 
by none so thoroughly as by him who has him- 
self arisen from sweet dreams of one beloved, 
to bathe in the aromatic air of a southern 
midsummer night. 

One of the finest poems by Willis — the very 
best, in my opinion, which he has ever written 
— has, no doubt, through this same defect of 
undue brevity, been kept back from its proper 
position, not less in the critical than in the 
popular view. 



130 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

The shadows lay along Broadway, 

'Twas near the twilight-tide — 
And slowly there a lady fair ' 

Was walking in her pride. 
Alone walk'd she ; but, viewlessly, 

Walk'd spirits at her side. 

Peace'charm'd the street beneath her feet, 

And Honor charm 'd the air; 
And all astir looked kind on her, 

And call'd her good as fair — 
For all God ever gave to her 

She kept with chary care. 

She kept with care her beauties rare 

From lovers warm and true — 
For her heart was cold to all but gold. 

And the rich came not to woo — 
But honor'd well are charms to sell 

If priests the selling do. 

Now walking there was one more fair — 

A slight girl, lily -pale ; 
And she had unseen company 

To make the spirit quail — 
*Twixt Want and Scotn she walked forlorn, 

And nothing could avail. 

No mercy now can clear her brow 

For this world's peace to pray ; 
For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air 

Her woman's heart gave way! — 
But the sin forgiven by Christ in Heaven 

By man is cursed alway ! 

In this composition we find it difficult to 
recognize the Willis who has written so many 
mere "verses of society." The lines are not 
only richly ideal, but full of energy; while 
they breathe an earnestness — an evident sin- 
cerity of sentiment — for which we look in vain 
throughout all the other works of this author. 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 131 

While the epic mania — while the idea that, 
to merit in poetry, prolixity is indispensable — 
has, for some years past, been gradually dying 
out of the public mind, by mere dint of its own 
absurdity — we find it succeeded by a heresy 
too palpably false to be long tolerated, but one 
which, in the brief period it has already 
endured, may be said to have accomplished 
more in the corruption of our Poetical Litera- 
ture than all its other enemies combined. I 
allude to the heresy of The Didactic. It has 
been assumed, tacitly and avowedly, directly 
and indirectly, that the ultimate object of all 
Poetry is Truth. Every poem, it is said, 
should inculcate a moral ; and by this moral is 
the poetical merit of the work to be adjudged. 
We Americans especially have patronized this 
happy idea; and we Bostonians, very espe- 
cially, have developed it in full. We have 
taken it into our heads that to write a poem 
simply for the poem's sake, and to acknowl- 
edge such to have been our design, would be 
to confess ourselves radically wanting in the 
true Poetic dignity and force : — but the simple 
fact is, that, would we but permit ourselves 
to look into our own souls, we should imme- 
diately there discover that under the sun there 
neither exists nor can exist any v/ork more 
thoroughly dignifiea — more supremely noble 
than this very poem per se— this poem which 
is a poem and nothing more — this poem writ- 
ten solely for the poem's sake. 

With as deep a reverence for the True as ever 
inspired the bosom of man, I would, neverthe- 



132 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

less, limit, in some measure, its modes of incul- 
cation. I would limit to enforce them. I 
would not enfeeble them by dissipation. The 
demands of Truth are severe. She has no 
sympathy with the myrtles. All that which 
is so indispensable in Song, is precisely all 
that with which she has nothing whatever to 
do. It is but making her a flaunting paradox, 
to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforc- 
ing a truth, we need severity rather than 
efflorescence of language. We must be simple, 
precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unim- 
passioned. In a word, we must be in that 
mood which, as nearly as possible, is the exact 
converse of the poetical. He must be blind 
indeed who does not perceive the radical and 
chasmal differences between the truthful and 
the poetical modes of inculcation. He must 
be theory-mad beyond redemption who, in spite 
of these differences, shall still persist in at- 
tempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and 
waters of Poetry and Truth. 

Dividing the world of mind into its three 
most immediately obvious distinctions, we 
have the Pure Intellect, Taste, and the Moral 
Sense. I place Taste in the middle, because 
it is just this position which, in the mind, it 
occupies. It holds intimate relations with 
either extreme, but from the Moral Sense is 
separated by so faint a difference that Aris- 
totle has not hesitated to place some of its 
operations among the virtues themselves. 
Nevertheless, we find the offices of the trio 
marked with a sufficient distinction. Just as 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 133 

the Intellect concerns itself with Truth, so 
Taste informs us of the Beautiful while the 
Moral Sense is regardful of Duty. Of this 
latter, while Conscience teaches the obliga- 
tion and Reason the expediency, Taste con- 
tents herself with displaying the charms: — 
waging war upon Vice solely on the ground of 
her deformity — her disproportion — her animos- 
ity to the fitting, to the appropriate, to the 
harmonious — in a word, to Beauty. 

An immortal instinct, deep within the spirit 
of man, is thus, plainly, a sense of the Beauti- 
ful. This it is which administers to his de- 
light in the manifold forms, and sounds, and 
odors, and sentiments, amid which he exists. 
And just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or 
the eyes of Amaryllis in the mirror, so is 
the mere oral or written repetition of these 
forms, and sounds, and colors, and odors, and 
sentiments, a duplicate source of delight. But 
this mere repetition is not poetry. He who 
shall simply sing, with however glowing en- 
thusiasm, or with however vivid a truth of 
description of the sights, and sounds, and 
odors, and colors, and sentiments, which greet 
him in common with all mankind — he, I say, 
has yet failed to prove his divine title. There 
is still a something in the distance which he 
has been unable to attain. We have still a 
thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has not 
shown us the crystal springs. This thirst be- 
longs to the immortality of Man. It is at once 
a consequence and an indication of his per- 
ennial existence. It is the desire of the moth 



134 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the 
Beauty before us — but a wild effort to reach 
the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic 
prescience of the glories beyond the grave, 
we struggle, by multiform combinations 
among the things and thoughts of Time, to 
attain a portion of that Loveliness whose very 
elements, perhaps, appertain to eternity alone. 
And thus when by Poetry — or when by Music, 
the most entrancing of the Poetic moods — we 
find ourselves melted into tears — we weep 
then — not as the Abbate Gravina supposes — 
through excess of pleasure, but through a cer- 
tain petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability 
to grasp now wholly, here on earth, at once 
and forever, those divine and rapturous joys, 
of which through the poem, or through the 
music, we attain to but brief and indetermi- 
nate glimpses. 

The struggle to apprehend the supernal 
Loveliness — this struggle, on the part of souls 
fittingly constituted — has given to the world 
all that which it (the world) has ever been 
enabled at once to understand and to feel as 
poetic. 

The Poetic Sentiment, of course, may de- 
velop itself in various modes — in Painting, in 
Sculpture, in Architecture, in the Dance — 
very especially in Music — and very peculiarly, 
and with a wide field, in the composition of 
the Landscape Garden. Our present theme, 
however, has regard only to its manifestation 
in words. And here let me speak briefly on 
the topic of rhythm. Contenting myself with 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 135 

the certainty that music, in its various modes 
of meter, rhythm, and rhyme, is of so vast a 
moment in Poetry as never to be wisely re- 
jected—is so vitally important and adjunct, 
that he is simply silly who declines its assist- 
ance, I will not now pause to maintain its 
absolute essentiality. It is in Music, perhaps, 
that the soul most nearly attains the great end 
for which, when inspired by the Poetic Senti- 
ment, it struggles— the creation of supernal 
Beauty. It may be, indeed, that here this 
sublime end is, now and then, attained in fact. 
We are often made to feel, with a shivering 
delight, that from an earthly harp are stricken 
notes which cannot have been unfamiliar to 
the angels. And thus there can be little doubt 
that in the union of Poetry with Music in its 
popular sense, we shall find the widest field 
for the Poetic development. The old Bards 
and Minnesingers had advantages which we 
do not possess— and Thomas Moore, singing 
his own songs, was, in the most legitimate 
manner, perfecting them as poems. 

To recapitulate, then:— I would define, in 
brief, the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical 
Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste. 
With the Intellect or with the Conscience, it 
has only collateral relations. Unless incident- 
ally, it has no concern whatever either with 
Duty or with Truth. 

A few words, however, in explanation. 
That pleasure which is at once the most pure, 
the most elevating, and the most intense, is 
derived, I maintain, from the contemplation 



1S6 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

of the Beautiful. In the contemplation of 
Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that 
pleasurable elevation, or excitement, of the 
soul, which we recognize as the Poetic Senti- 
ment, and which is so easily distinguished 
from Truth, which is the satisfaction of the Rea- 
son, or from Passion, v/hich is the excitement 
of the heart. I make Beauty, therefore — using 
the word as inclusive of the sublime — I make 
Beauty the province of the poem, simply be- 
cause it is an obvious rule of Art that effects 
should be made to spring as directly as pos- 
sible from their causes — no one as j^^et having 
been weak enough to deny that the peculiar 
elevation in question is at least most readily 
attainable in the poem. It by no means fol- 
lows, however, that the incitements of Passion, 
or the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of 
Truth, may not be introduced into a poem, 
and with advantage ; for they may subserve, 
incidentally, in various ways, the general pur- 
poses of the work: — but the true artist will 
alwaj's contrive to tone them down in proper 
subjection to that Beauty which is the atmos- 
phere and the real essence of the poem. 

I cannot better introduce the few poems 
which I shall present for your consideration, 
than by the citation of the Proem to Mr. 
Longfellow's "Waif": 

The day is done, and the darkness 

Falls from the wings of Night, 
As a feather is wafted downward 

From an Eagle in his flight. 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 137 

I see the lights of the village 
Gleam through the rain and the mist, 

And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me 
That my soul cannot resist ; 

A feeling of sadness and longing, 

That is not akin to pain, 
And resembles sorrow only 

As the mist resembles the rain. 

Come, read to me some poem, 
Some simple and heartfelt lay. _ 

That shall soothe this restless feeling 
And banish the thoughts of day. 

Not from the grand old masters. 

Not from the bards sublime, 
Whose distant footsteps echo 

Through the corridors of Time. 

For, like strains of martial music, 

Their mighty thoughts suggest 
Life's endless toil and endeavor; 

And to-night I long for rest. 

Read from some humbler poet. 
Whose songs gushed from his heart, 

As showers from the clouds of summer. 
Or tears from the eyelids start; 

Who through long days of labor, 

And nights devoid of ease. 
Still heard in his soul the music 

Of wonderful melodies. 

Such songs have power to quiet 

The restless pulse of care. 
And come like the benediction 

That follows after prayer. 

Then read from the treasured volume 

The poem of thy choice, 
And lend to the rhyme of the poet 
The beauty of thy voice. 
10 Poe's Poems. 



138 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

And the night shall be filled with music, 
And the cares, that infest the day, 

Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, 
And as silently steal away. 

With no great range of imagination, these 
lines have been admired for their delicacy of 
expression. Some of the images are very 
effective. Nothing can be better than — 

-the bards sublime, 



Whose distant footsteps echo 
Through the corridors of Time. 

The idea of the last quotation is also very 
effective. The poem, on the whole, however, 
is chiefly to be admired for th» graceful in- 
souciance of its meter, so well in accordance 
with the character of the sentiments, and espe- 
cially for the ease of the general manner. 
This **ease, " or naturalness, in a literary 
style, it has long been the fashion to regard as 
ease in appearance alone — as a point of really 
difficult attainment. But not so: a natural 
manner is difficult only to him who should 
never meddle with it — to the unnatural. It is 
but the result of writing with the understand- 
ing, or with the instinct, that the tone, in 
composition, should always be that which the 
mass of mankind would adopt — and must per- 
petually vary, of course, w-th the occasion. 
The author, who, after the fashion of The 
North American Review, should be, upon all 
occasions, merely *' quiet," must necessarily 
upon many occasions be simply silly, or stupid; 
and has no more right to be considered 
"easy," or "natural" than a Cockney ex- 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 139 

quisite, or than the sleeping Beauty in the 
wax-works. 

Among the minor poems of Bryant, none 
has so much impressed me as the one which he 
entitles "June." I quote only a portion of it; 

There, through the long, long summer hours, 

The golden light should lie. 
And thick, young herbs and groups of flowers 

Stand in their beauty by. 
The oriole should build and tell 
His lovetale, close beside my cell; 

The idle butterfly 
Should rest him there, and there be heard 
The housewife-bee and humming-bird. 

And what, if cheerful shouts, at noon. 

Come, from the village sent. 
Or songs of maids, beneath the moon, 

With fairy laughter bent? 
And what if, in the evening light, 
Betrothed lovers walk in sight 

Of my low monument? 
I would the lovely scene around 
Might know no sadder sight nor sound. 

I know. I know I should not see 

The season's glorious show. 
Nor would its brightness shine for me. 

Nor its wild musi flow ; 
But if, around my pi ce of sleep. 
The friends I love should come to weep, 

They might not haste to go. 
Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom 
Should keep them lingering by my tomb. 

These to their softened hearts should bear 

The thought of what has been. 
And speak of one who cannot share 

The gladness of the scene ; 
Whose part in all the pomp that fills 



140 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

The circuit of the summer hills. 
Is — that his grave is green ; 
And deeply would their hearts rejoice 
To hear again his living voice. 

The rh5^thmical flow, here, is even voluptu- 
ous — nothing could be more melodious. The 
poem has always affected me in a remarkable 
manner. The intense melancholy which seems 
to well up, perforce, to the surface of all the 
poet's cheerful sayings about his grave, we 
find thrilling us to the soul — while there is the 
truest poetic elevation in the thrill. The im- 
pression left is one of a pleasurable sadness. 
And if, in the remaining compositions which I 
shall introduce to you, there be more or less of 
a similar tone always apparent, let me remind 
you that (how or why we know not) this cer- 
tain taint of sadness is inseparably connected 
'with all the higher manifestations of true 
Beauty. It is, nevertheless, 

A feeling of sadness and longing 

That is not akin to pain, 
And resembles sorrow only 

As the mist resembles the rain. 

The taint of which I speak is clearly per- 
ceptible even in a poem so full of brilliancy 
and spirit as the ''Health" of Edward Coat 
Pmkney : 

I fill this cup to one made up 

Of loveliness alone, 
A woman, of her gentle sex 

The seeming paragon ; 
To whom the better elements 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. UJ 

And kindly stars have given 
A form so fair, that, like the air, 
'Tis less of earth than heaven. 

Her every tone is music's own 

Like those of morning birds, 
And something more than melody 

Dwells ever in her words ; 
The coinage of her heart are they, 

And from her lips each flows 
As one may see the burden'd bee 

Forth issue from the rose. 

Affections are as thoughts to her, 

The measures of her hours ; 
Her feelings have the fragrancy. 

The freshness of young flowers ; 
And lovely passions, changing oft. 

So fill her, she appears 
The image of themselves by turns,— > 

The idol of past years ! 

Of her bright face one glance will trace 

A picture on the brain, 
And of her voice in echoing hearts 

A sound must long remain ; 
But memory, such as mine of her. 

So very much endears, 
When death is nigh, my latest sigh 

Will not be life's, but hers. 

I fill'd this cup to one made up 

Of loveliness alone, 
A woman, of her gentle sex 

The seeming paragon — 
Her health ! ana would on earth there stood 

Some more of such a frame, 
That life might be all poetry. 

And weariness a name. 

It was the misfortune of Mr. Pinkney to 
have been born too far south. Had he been a 
New Englander, it is probable that he would 



142 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

have been ranked as the first of American lyr^ 
ists, by that magnanimous cable which has so 
long controlled the destinies of American Let- 
ters, in conducting the thing called The North 
American Review. The poem just cited is 
especially beautiful ; but the poetic elevation 
which it induces, we must refer chiefly to our 
sympathy in the poet's enthusiasm. We par- 
don his hyperboles for the evident earnestness 
with which they are uttered. 

It was by no means my design, however, to 
expatiate upon the merits of what I should 
read you. These will necessarily speak for 
themselves. Boccalini, in his "Advertise- 
ments from Parnassus," tells us that Zoilus 
once presented Apollo a very caustic criticism 
upon a very admirable book: — whereupon the 
god asked him for the beauties of the work. 
He replied that he only busied himself about 
the errors. On hearing this, Apollo, handing 
him a sack of unwinnowed wheat, bade him to 
pick out all the chaff for his reward. 

Now this fable answers very well as a hit at 
the critics — but I am by no means sure that 
the god was in the right. I am by no means 
certain that the true limits of the critical duty 
are not grossly misunderstood. Excellence, 
in a poem especially, may be considered in the 
light of an axiom, which need only be properly 
put, to become self-evident. It is not excel- 
lence if it require to be demonstrated as such : 
■ — and thus, to point out too particularly the 
merits of a work of Art, is to admit that they 
are not merits altogether. 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. W3 

Among the "Melodies" of Thomas Moore, 
is one whose distinguished character as a poem 
proper, seems to have been singularly left out 
of view. I allude to his lines begmmng— 
"Come, rest in this bosom." The intense 
enero-y of their expression is not surpassed by 
anything in Byron. There are two of the 
lines in which a sentiment is conveyed that 
embodies the all in all of the divine passion of 
Love— a sentiment which, perhaps has found 
its echo in more, and in more passionate, 
human hearts than any other single sentiment 
ever embodied in words : 

Come, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer, 
Though the herd have fled from thee, thy home is still 

here: , , , . 

Here still is the smile, that no cloud can o ercast. 
And a heart and a hand all thy own to the last. 

Oh ' what was love made for. if 't is not the same 
Through joy and through torment, through glory ana 

shame? ., . .^. ^ . 

I know not, I ask not, if guilt's m that heart, 
I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art. 

Thou hast call'd me thy Angel in moments ot bliss, 
And thy Angel I'll be, 'mid the horrors of this,— 
Through the furnace, unshrinking, thy steps to pursue, 
And shield thee, and save thee,— or perish there, too! 

It has been the fashion, of late days, to deny 
Moore Imagination, while granting him Fancy 
—a distinction originating with Coleridge-- 
than whom no man more fully comprehended 
the great powers of Moore. The fact is, that 
the fancy of this poet so far predominates 
over all his other faculties, and over the fancy 



144 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

of all other men, as to have induced, very 
naturally, the idea that he is a fanciful only. 
But never was there a greater mistake. 
Never was a grosser wrong done the fame of a 
true poet. In the compass of the English lan- 
guage 1 can call to mind no poem more pro- 
foundly — more weirdly imaginative in the best 
sense, than the lines commencing — *'I would 
I were by that dim lake" — which are the com- 
position of Thomas Moore. I regret that I am 
unable to remember them. 

One of the noblest — and, speaking of Fancy, 
one of the most singularly fanciful of modern 
poets, was Thomas Hood. His "Fair Ines" 
had always, for me, an inexpressible charm: 

O saw ye not fair Ines? 

She's gone into the West, 
To dazzle when the sun is down 

And rob the world of rest ; 
She took our daylight with her. 

The smiles that we love best. 
With morning blushes on her cheek, 

And pearls upon her breast. 

O turn again, fair Ines, 

Before the fall of night. 
For fear the moon should shine alone, 

And the stars unrival'd bright : 
And blessed will the lover be 

That walks beneath their light. 
And breathes the love against thy cheek 

I dare not even write ! 

Would I had been, fair Ines, 

That gallant cavalier, 
Who rode so gayly by thy side, 

And whisper'd thee so near! 
Were there no bonny dames at home, 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 145 

Or no true lovers here, 
That he should cross the seas to win 
The dearest of the dear? 

I saw thee, lovely Ines, 

Descend along the shore, 
With bands of noble gentlemen, 

And banners wav'd before ; 
And gentle youth and maidens gay. 

And snowy plumes they wore ; 
It would have been a beauteous dream, 

— If it had been no more ! 

Alas, alas, fair Ines, 

She went away with song. 
With Music waiting on her steps. 

And shoutings of the throng ; 
But some were sad and felt no mirth, 

But only Music's wrong. 
In sounds that sang Farewell, Farewell, 

To her you've loved so long. 

Farewell, farewell, fair Ines, 

That vessel never bore 
So fair a lady on its deck. 

Nor danced so light before,— 
Alas for pleasure on the sea, 

And sorrow on the shore ! 
The smile that blessed one lover's heart 

Has broken many more. 

**The Haunted House," by the same author, 
is one of the truest poems ever written — one 
of the truest — :One of the most unexception- 
able — one of the most thoroughly artistic, both 
in its theme and in its execution. It is, more- 
over, powerfully ideal — imaginative. I regret 
that its length renders it unsuitable for the pur- 
poses of this Lecture. In place of it, permit 
me to offer the universally appreciated 
••Bridge of Sighs." 



146 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



One more Unfortunate 
Weary of breath, 
Rashly importunate, 
Gone to her death! 

Take her up tenderly. 

Lift her with care; 

Fashion'd so slenderly, 
Young, and so fair! 

Look at her garments 
Clinging like cerements; 
Whilst the wave constantly 
Drips from her clothing; 
Take her up instantly, 
Loving and loathing;— 

Touch her not scornfully, 
Think of her mournfully, 
Gently and humanly; 
Not of the stains of her, 
All that remains of her 
Now, is pure womanly. 

Make no deep scrutiny 
Into her mutiny 
Rash and undutiful; 
Past all dishonor. 
Death has left on her 
Only the beautiful. 

Still, for all slips of hers. 
One of Eve's family— 
Wipe those poor lips of 

hers. 
Oozing so clammily, 
Loop up her tresses 
Escaped from the comb, 
Her fair auburn tresses; 
Whilst wonderment guess- 
es 
Where was her home. 



Who was her father? 

Who was her mother? 

Had she a sister? 

Had she a brother? 

Or was there a dearer one 

Still, and a nearer one 

Yet, than all other? 

Alas! for the rarity 
Of Christian Charity 
Under the sun! 
Oh! it was pitiful! 
Near a whole city full. 
Home she had none. 

Sisterly, brotherly, 
Fatherly, motherly 
Feelings had changed: 
Love, by harsh evidence 
Thrown from its eminence, 
Even God's providence 
Seeming estranged. 

Where the lamps quiver 
So far in the river. 
With many a light 
From window and case- 
ment, 
From garret to basement. 
She stood, with amazement 
Houseless by night. 

The bleak wind of March 
Made her tremble and 

shiver 
But not the black arch, 
Or the dark flowing river: 
Mad from life's history, 
Glad to death's mystery. 
Swift to be hurl'd— 
Anywhere, anywhere 
Out of the world! 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



14T 



Dreadfully staring 
Through muddy impurity, 
As when with the daring 
Last look of despairing 
Fixed on futurity. 

Perishing gloomily, 
Spurred by contumely, 
Cold inhumanity, 
T/arning insanity. 
Into her rest, — 
Cross her hands humbly, 
As if praying dumbly. 
Over her breast! 
Owning her weakness, 
Her evil behavior. 
And leaving, with meek- 
ness, 
Her sins with her Saviour! 



In she plunged boldly. 
No matter how coldly 
The rough river ran, — 
Over the brink of it. 
Picture it, — think of it. 
Dissolute Man! 
Lave in it, drink of it 
Then, if you can! 

Take her up tenderly, 
Lift her with care; 
Fashion'd so slenderly. 
Young and so fair! 

Ere her limbs frigidly 
Stiffen so rigidly, 
Decently, — kindly, — 
Smooth and compose them, 
And her eyes, close them. 
Staring so blindly! 

The vigor of this poem is no less remarkable 
than its pathos. The versification, although 
carrying the fanciful to the very verge of the 
fantastic, is nevertheless admirably adapted to 
the wild insanity which is the thesis of the 
poem. 

Among the minor poems of Lord Byron, is 
one which has never received from the critics 
the praise which it undoubtedly deserves : 

Though the day of my destiny's over, 

And the star of my fate hath declined, 
Thy soft heart refused to discover 

The faults which so many could find; _ 
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted 

It shrunk not to share it with me. 
And the love which my spirit hath painted 

It never hath found but in thee. 



148 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

Then when nature around me is smiling. 

The last smile which answers to mine, 
I do not believe it beguiling, 

Because it reminds me of thine ; 
And when winds are at war with the ocean. 

As the breasts I believed in with me, 
If their billows excite an emotion, 

It is that they bear me from thee. 

Though the rock of my last hope is shivered, 

And its fragments are sunk in the wave, 
Though I feel that my soul is delivered 

To pain — it shall not be its slave. 
There is many a pang to pursue me : 

They may crush, but they shall not contemn— 
They may torture, but shall not subdue me — 

'Tis of thee that I think — not of them. 

Though human, thou didst not deceive me, 

Though woman, thou didst not forsake, 
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me, 

Though slandered, thou never couldst shake,— 
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me, 

Though parted, it was not to fly. 
Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me, 

Nor mute, that the world might belie. 

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it, 

Nor the war of the many with one— 
If my soul was not fitted to prize it, 

'T was folly not sooner to shun: 
And if dearly that error hath cost me, 

And more than I once could foresee, 
I have found that whatever it lost me. 

It could not deprive me of thee. 

From the wreck of the past, which hath perished, 

Thus much I at least may recall, 
It hath taught me that which I most cherished 

Deserved to be dearest of all : 
In the desert a fountain is springing. 

In the wide waste there still is a tree, 
And a bird in the solitude singing. 

Which speaks to my spirit of thee. 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 149 

Although the rhythm, here, is one of the most 
difficult, the versification could scarcely be 
improved. No nobler theme ever engaged the 
pen of poet. It is the soul-elevating idea, that 
no man can consider himself entitled to com- 
plain of Fate while in his adversity, he still 
retains the unwavering love of woman. 

From Alfred Tennyson — although in perfect 
sincerity I regard him as the noblest poet that 
ever lived — I have left myself time to cite only 
a very brief specimen. I call him, and think 
him the noblest of poets — not because the 
impressions he produces are, at all times, the 
most profound — not because the poetical 
excitement which he induces, is at all times, 
the most intense — but because it is, at all 
times, the most ethereal — in other words, the 
most elevating and the most pure. No poet is 
so little of the earth, earthy. What I am 
about to read is from his last long poem, **The 
Princess:'* 

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 
Tears from the depth of some divine despair, 
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, 
And thinking of the days that are no more. 

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail. 
That brings our friends up from the underworld, 
Sad as the last which reddens over one 
That sinks with all we love below the verge; 
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. 

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns 
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds 
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes 
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; 
So sad, so strange, the davs that are no more. 



150 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

Deaf as remember'd kisses after death, 
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign 'd 
On lips that are for others ; deep as love, 
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret ; 
O Death in Life, the days that are no more. 

Thus, although in a very cursory and imper- 
fect manner, I have endeavored to convey to 
you my conception of the Poetic Principle. It 
has been my purpose to suggest that, while 
this Principle itself is, strictly and simply, the 
Human Aspiration for Supernal Beauty, the 
manifestation of the Principle is always found 
in an elevating excitement of the Soul — quite 
independent of that passion which is the intox- 
ication of the Heart — or of that Truth which 
is the satisfaction of the Reason. For, in 
regard to Passion, alas! its tendency is to 
degrade, rather than to elevate the Soul. 
Love, on the contrary — Love— the true, the 
divine Eros — the Uranian, as distinguished 
from the Dionsean Venus — is unquestionably 
the purest and truest of all poetical themes. 
Still in regard to Truth — if, to be sure, 
through the attainment of a truth, we are led 
to perceive a harmony where none was appar- 
ent before, we experience, at once, the true 
poetical effect — but this effect is referable to 
the harmony alone, and not in the least degree 
to the truth which merely served to render the 
harmony manifest. 

We shall reach, however, more immediately 
a distinct conception of what the true Poetry 
is, by mere reference to a few of the simple 
elements which induce in the Poet himself the 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 151 

true poetical effect. He recognizes the 
ambrosia which nourishes his soul, in the bright 
orbs that shine in Heaven — in the volutes of 
the flower — in the clustering of low shrubberies 
— in the waving of the grain-fields — in the 
slanting of tall, Eastern trees — in the blue dis- 
tance of mountains — in the grouping of clouds 
— in the twinkling of half -hidden brooks — in 
the gleaming of silver rivers — in the repose of 
sequestered lakes — in the star-mirroring depths 
of lonely wells. He perceives it in the songs 
of birds — in the harp of ^olus — in the sighing 
of the night-wind — in the repining voice of 
the forest — in the surf that complains to the 
shore — in the fresh breath of the woods — in 
the scent of the violet — in the voluptuous per- 
fume of the hyacinth — in the suggestive odor 
that comes to him at eventide, from far-dis- 
tant, undiscovered islands, over dim oceans, 
illimitable and unexplored. He owns it in all 
noble thoughts — in all unworldly motives — in 
all holy impulses — in all chivalrous, generous, 
and self-sacrificing deeds. He feels it in the 
beauty of woman — in the grace of her step — in 
the luster of her eye — in the melody of her 
voice — in her soft laughter — in her sigh — in 
the harmony of the rustling of her robes. He 
deeply feels it in her winning endearments — 
in her burning enthusiasms — in her gentle 
charities — in her meek and devotional endur- 
ances — but above all — ah, far above all — he 
kneels to it — he worships it in the faith, in the 
purity, in the strength, in the altogether 
divine majesty of her love. 



152 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. ! 

Let me conclude — by the recitation of yet 
another brief poem — one very different in 
character from any that I have before quoted. 
It is by Motherwell, and is called *'The Song 
of the Cavalier." With our modern and alto- 
gether rational ideas of the absurdity and impi- 
ety of warfare, we are not precisely in that 
frame of mind best adapted to sympathize with 
the sentiments, and thus to appreciate the real 
excellence of the poem. To do this fully, we 
must identify ourselves, in fancy, with the soul 
of the old cavalier. 

Then motinte ! then mounte ! brave gallants, all. 

And don your helmes amaine: 
Deathe's couriers, Fame and Honor, call 

Us to the field againe. 
No shrewish teares shall fill our eye 

When the sword-hilt's in our hand,— 
Heart-whole we'll part, and no whit sighe 

For the fayrest of the land ; 
Let piping swaine, and craven wight. 

Thus weepe and puling crye, 
Our business is like men to fight, 

And hero-like to die! 



POEMS. 



PREFACE TO THE POEMS. 

These trifles are collected and republished chiefly with 
a view to their redemption from the many improve- 
ments to which they have been subjected while going 
at random "the rounds of the press. " I am naturally 
anxious that what I have written should circulate as I 
wrote it, if it circulate at all. In defense of my own 
taste, nevertheless, it is incumbent upon me to say that 
I think nothing in this volume of much value to the 
public, or very creditable to myself. Events not to be 
controlled have prevented me from making, at any time, 
any serious effort in what, under happier circum- 
stances, would have been the field of my choice. With 
me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion ; and 
the passions should be held in reverence ; they must not 
— they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the 
paltry compensations, or the more paltry commenda- 
tions, of mankind. E. A. P. 



POEMS. 



THE RAVEN. 

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pon- 
dered weak and weary, 

Over many a quaint and curious volume of 
forgotten lore— 

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly 
there came a tapping 

As of some one gently rapping, rappmg at 
my cham-ber door. 

•''Tissome visitor," I muttered, *'tappmgat 
my chamber door — 

Only this and nothing more." 

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak 

December, . 

And each separate dying ember wrought its 

ghost upon the floor. 
Eagerly I wished the morrow ;— vamly I had 

sought to borrow 
From my books surcease of sorrow— sorrow for 

the lost Lenore — 
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the 

angels name Lenore — 

Nameless here for evermore. 

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each 
purple curtain 
illed me— filled r\ 
never felt before ; 



purple curtain 
Thrilled me— filled me with fantastic terrors 



155 



156 POE'S POEMS. 

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I 

stood repeating 
" 'Tis son:ie visitor entreating entrance at my 

chamber door — 
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my 

chamber door; 

This it is and ndthing more." 

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating 
then no longer, 

**Sir," said I, "or, Madam, truly your for- 
giveness I implore ; 

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently 
you came rapping, 

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at 
my chamber door, 

That I scarce was sure I heard you" — here I 

opened wide the door 

Darkness there and nothing more. 

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood 
there wondering, fearing, 

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever 
dared to dream before ; 

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness 
gave no token. 

And the only word there spoken was the whis- 
pered v/ord, *'Lenore!" — 

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back 
th-e word, * ' Lenore ! ' ' 

Merely this and nothing more. 

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul 
within me burning, 



POE'S POEMS. 15'^ 

Soon again I heard a tapping something louder 
than before. 

•*Surely," said I, "surely that is something at 
my window lattice; 

Let me see, then, what thereat is and this 
mystery explore — 

Let my heart be still a moment and this mys- 
tery explore; — 

*Tis the wind and nothing more. 

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with 

many a flirt and flutter 
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly 

days of yore. 
Not the least obeisance made he ; not a minute 

stopped or stayed he, 
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above 

my chamber door — 
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my 

chamber door — 

Perched, and sat and nothing more. 

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy 
into smiling, 

By the grave and stern decorum of the counte- 
nance it wore, ^^ 

** Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou, 
I said, '*art sure no craven, 

©hastly grim and ancient Raven wandering 
from the Nightly shore— 

'"ell me what thy lordly name is on the 
Night's Plutonian shore!" 

Quoth the Raven ** Nevermore. 



158 POE'S POEMS. 

Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear 

discourse so plainly. 
Though its answer little meaning — little 

relevancy bore; 
For we cannot help agreeing that no living 

human being 
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above 

his chamber door — 
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above 

his chamber door, 

With such name as "Nevermore." 

But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid 

bust, spoke only 
That one word, as if his soul in that one word 

he did outpour; 
Nothing farther then he uttered ; not a feather 

then he fluttered — 
Till I scarcely more than muttered "Other 

friends have flown before — 
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes 

have flown before. ' * 

Then the bird said "Nevermore." 

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so 
aptly spoken, 

"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only 
stock and store 

Caught from some unhappy master whom un- 
merciful Disaster 

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs 
one burden bore — 

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy 
burden bore 

Of 'Never — nevermore.* *' 



POE'S POEMS. 159 

But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul 
into smiline^, 

Straight 1 wheeled a cushioned seat in front of 
bird and bust and door; 

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook my- 
self to linking 

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous 
bird of yore — 

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and 
ominous bird of yore 

Meant in croaking ** Nevermore. " 

Thus I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable 
expressing 

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into 
my bosom's core; 

This and more I sat divining, with my head at 
ease reclining 

On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp- 
light gloated o'er, 

But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp- 
light gloating o'er 

She shall press, ah, nevermore. 

Then, methought, the air grew denser, per- 
fumed from an unseen censer 

Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled 
on the tufted floor. 

*'Wretch," I cried, ''thy God hath lent thee— 
by these angels he hath sent thee 

Respite — respite and nepenthe from thy mem- 
ories of Lenore ! 

Quaff, oh, quaff this kind nepenthe and forget 
this lost Lenore!" 

Quoth the Raven, ** Nevermore." 



160 POE'S POEMS. 

**Prophet!'* said I, "thing of evil! — prophet 

still, if bird or devil! — 
Whether tempest sent, or whether tempest 

tossed thee here ashore. 
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land 

enchanted — 
On this home by Horror haunted — tell me 

truly, I implore — 
Is there — is there balm in Gilead? — tell me — 

tell me, I implore!" 

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil — prophet 

still, if bird or devil ! 
By that Heaven that bends above us — by that 

God we both adore — 
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the 

distant Aidenn, 
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels 

name Lenore — 
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the 

angels name Lenore." 

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 

"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or 

fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting — 
"Get thee back into the tempest and the 

Night's Plutonian shore! 
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie 

thy soul hath spoken! 
Leave my loneliness unbroken! — quit the bust 

above my door! 
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take 

thy form from off my door!" 

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 



POE'S POEMS. 161 

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, 

still is sitting 
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my 

chamber door; 
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's 

that is dreaming. 
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws 

his shadow on the floor; 
And my soul from out that shadow that lies 

floating on the floor, 

Shall be lifted — nevermore. 

LENORE. 

Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown 

forever ! 
Let the bell toll ! — a saintly soul floats on the 

Stygian river; 
And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear? — weep 

now or never more! 
See ! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy 

love, Lenore! 
Come ! let the burial rite be read — the funeral 

song be sung! — 
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever 

died so young — 
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she 

died so young. 

"Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and 

hated her for her pride, 
**And when she fell in feeble health, ye 

blessed her — that she died ! 
•*How shall the ritual, then, be read? — the 

requiem how be sung? 

11 Poe'B Poems 



162 POE'S POEMS. 

**By you — by yours, the evil eye, — by yours, 

the slanderous tongue 
*'That did to death the innocence that died, 

and died so young?" 

Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a 

Sabbath song 
Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel 

no wrong! 
The sweet Lenore hath '*gone before,*' with 

Hope, that flew beside, 
Leaving thee wild for the dear child that 

should have been thy bride — 
For her, the fair and debonair, that now so 

lowly lies. 
The life upon her yellow hair but not within 

her eyes — 
The life still there, upon her hair — the death 

upon her eyes. 

**Avaunt! to-night my heart is light. No 

dirge will I upraise, 
**But waft the angel on her flight with a Paean 

of old days ! 
•* Let no bell toll! — lest her sweet soul, amid 

its hallowed mirth, 
''Should catch the note, as it doth float up from 

the damned Earth. 
"To friends above, from fiends below, the 

indignant ghost is riven — 
•'From Hell unto a high estate far up within 

the Heaven — 
'*From grief and groan, to a golden throne, 

beside the King of Heaven." 



FOE'S POEMS. 163 

HYMN. 

At morn — at noon — at twilight dim- 
Maria thou hast heard my hymn! 
In joy and woe — in good and ill — 
Mother of God, be with me still! 
When the Hours flew brightly by, 
And not a cloud obscured the sky, 
My soul, lest it should truant be, 
Thy grace did guide to thine and thee. 
Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast 
Darkly my Present and my Past, 
Let my Future radiant shine 
With sweet hopes of thee and thine! 

A VALEI'TINE. 

For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous 
eyes, 
Brightly expressive as the twins of Loeda. 
Shall find her own sweet name, that, nestling 
lies 
Upon the page, enwrapped from every 
reader. 
Search narrowly the lines! — they hold a 
treasure 
Divine — a talisman — an amulet 
That must be worn at heart. Search well the 
measure — 
The words — the syllables ! Do not forget 
The trivialest point, or you may lose your 
labor! 
And yet there is in this no Gordian knot 
Which one might not undo without a saber, 
If one could merely comprehend the plot 



164 POE'S POEMS. 

Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peer- 
ing 
Eyes scintillating soul, there lies perdus 
Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hear- 
ing 
Of poets, by poets — as the name is a poet's, 
too. 
Its letters, although naturally lying 

Like the knight Pinto — Mendez Ferdi- 
nand© — 
Still form a synonym for Truth. — Cease try- 
ing! 
You will not read the riddle, though you do 
the best you can do. 

[To translate the address, read the first letter 
of the first line in connection with the second 
letter of the second line, the third letter of 
the third line, the fourth of the fourth, and so 
on to the end. The name will thus appear.] 

THE COLISEUM. 

Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary 

Of lofty contemplation left to Time 

By buried centuries of pomp and power! 

At length — at length — after so many days 

Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst, 

(Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie,) 

I kneel, an altered and humble man, 

Amid thy shadows, and so drink within 

My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory! 

Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld! 
Silence ! and Desolation and dim Night I 



POE*S POEMS. 165 

I feel ye now— I feel ye in your strength— 
O spells more sure than e'er Judaean king 
Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane ! 
O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee 
Ever drew down from out the quiet stars! 
Here, where a hero fell, a column falls! 
Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold, 
A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat ! 
Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded 

hair , _ _ 

Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and 

thistle! 
Here where on golden throne the monarch 

Glides, specter-like, unto his marble home, 
Lit by the wan light of the horned moon, 
The swift and silent lizard of the stones! 

But stay! these walls— these ivy-clad arcades— 

These moldering plinths— these sad and black- 
ened shafts — 

These vague entablatures — this crumbhng 
f Tieze*~"~ 

These shattered cornices — this wreck— this 
ruin — 

These stones— alas! these gray stones— are 
they all — 

All of the famed, and the colossal left 

By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me? 

"Not air*— the Echoes answer me— ** not all! 
•* Prophetic sounds and loud, arise forever 
**From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise, 
**As melody from Memnon to the Sun. 



166 POE'S POEMS. 

** We rule the hearts of mightiest men — we rule 
*'With a despotic sway all giant minds. 
**We are not impotent — we pallid stones. 
"Not all our power is gone — not|[all our fame — ■ 
"Not all the magic of our high renown — 
"Not all the wonder that encircles us — 
"Not all the mysteries that in us lie — 
"Not all the memories that hang upon 
"And cling around about us as a garment, 
"Clothing us in a robe of more than glory.*' 

TO HELEN. 

I saw thee once — once only — years ago: 

I must not say how many — but not many. 

It was a July midnight; and from out 

A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, 

soaring. 
Sought a precipitate pathway up through 

heaven, 
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light. 
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber, 
Upon the upturn 'd faces of a thousand 
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, 
Where no winds dared to stir, unless on tip- 
toe — 
Fell on the upturned faces of these roses 
That gave out, in return for the love-light, 
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death — 
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses 
That smiled and died in this parterre, en- 
chanted 
By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence, 
Clad all in white, upon a violet bank 



POE'S POEMS. 167 

I saw thee half reclining ; while the moon 
Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses, 
And on thine own, upturn'd — alas, in sorrow! 
Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight — • 
Was it not Fate, (whose name is also Sorrow,) 
That bade me pause before that garden gate, 
To breathe the incense of those slumbering 

roses? 
No footsteps stirred : the hated world all slept, 
Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven ! — oh, 

God! 
How my heart beats in coupling those two 

words !) 
Save only thee and me. I paused — I looked — 
And in an instant all things disappeared. 
(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!) 
The pearly luster of the moon went out: 
The mossy banks and the meandering paths, 
The happy flowers and the repining trees, 
Were seen no more: the very roses* odors 
Died in the arms of the adoring airs. 
All — all expired save thee — save less than thou: 
Save only the divine light in thine eyes — 
Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes. 
I saw but them — they were the world to me. 
I saw but them— saw only them for hours — 
Saw only them until the moon went down. 
What wild heart-histories seemed to lie en- 
written 
Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres ! 
How dark a woe! yet how sublime a hope! 
How silently serene a sea of pride ! 
How daring an ambition ! yet how deep — 
How fathomless a capacity for love! ; 



168 POE'S POEMS. 

But now, at length, dear Dian sank from 

sight, 
Into a western couch of thunder-cloud; 
And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees 
Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained. 
They would not go — they never yet have gone. 
Lighting my lonely pathway home that night. 
They have not left me (as my hopes have) 

since 
They follow me — they lead me through the 

years 
They are my ministers — yet I their slave. 
Their office is to illumine and enkindle — 
My duty, to be saved by their bright light, 
And purified in their electric fire, 
And sanctified in their elysian fire. 
They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope), 
And are far up in Heaven — the stars I kneel to 
In the sad, silent watches of my night ; 
While even in the meridian glare of day 
I see them still — two sweetly scintillant 
Venuses, unextinguished by the sun ! 

TO . 



Not long ago, the writer of these lines, 
In the mad pride of intellectuality, 
Maintained **the power of words'* — denied 

that ever 
A thought arose within the human brain 
Beyond the utterance of the human tongue : 
And now, as if in mockery of that boast. 
Two words — two foreign soft dissyllables — 
Italian tones, made only to be murmured 



POE'S POEMS. 169 

By angels dreaming in the moonlit **dew 
That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon 

hill,"— 
Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart, 
Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of 

thought, 
Richer, far wilder, far diviner visions 
Than even the seraph harper, Israfel, 
(Who has **the sweetest voice of all God's 

creatures,") 
Could hope to utter. And I ! my spells are 

broken. 
The pen falls powerless from my shivering 

hand. 
With thy dear name as text, though bidden by 

thee, 
I cannot write — I cannot speak or think — 
Alas, I cannot feel; for 'tis not feeling, 
This standing motionless upon the golden 
Threshold of the wide-open gate of dreams, 
Gazing entranced, adown the gorgeous vista, 
And thrilling as I see, upon the right. 
Upon the left, and all the way along, 
Amid unpurpled vapors, far away 
To where the prospect terminates — thee only. 

ULALUME. 

The skies they were ashen and sober; 

The leaves they were crisped and sere — . 

The leaves they were withering and sere — 
It was light in the lonesome October 

Of my most immemorial year; 
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, 

12 Fo^s Poems. 



170 POE'S POEMS. 

In the misty mid region of Weir — 
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber 

In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 
Here once, through an alley Titanic, 

Of cypress, I roamed with my soul — 

Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul. 
These were days when my heart was volcanic 

As the scoriae rivers that roll — 

As the lavas that restlessly roll 
Their sulphurous currents down Mount Yaanek 

In the ultimate climes of the pole — 
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek 

In the realms of the boreal pole. 

Our talk had been serious and sober, 

But our thoughts they were palsied and 

sere — 
Our memories were treacherous and sere 

For we knew not the month was October, 

And we marked not the night of the year-^ 
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!) 

We noted not the dim lake of Auber — 

(Though once we had journeyed down 
here) — 

Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber, 

Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 

And now, as the night was senescent 
And star-dials pointed to morn — 
As the star-dials hinted of morn— 

At the end of our path a liquescent 
And nebulous luster was born, 

Out of which a miraculous crescent 
Arose with a duplicate horn — 



poE's POEMS. m 

Astarte's bediamonded crescent 
Distinct with its duplicate horn. 

And I said — '*She is warmer than Dian: 
She rolls through an ether of sighs — 
She revels in a region of sighs : 

She has seen that the tears are not dry on 

These cheeks, where the worm never dies, 

And has come past the stars of the Lion 
To point us the path to the skies — 
To the Lethean peace of the skies — 

Come up, in despite of the Lion, 

To shine on us with her bright eyes — 

Come up through the lair of the Lion, 
With love in her luminous eyes." 

But Psyche, uplifting her finger, 

Said — "Sadly this star I mistrust — 
Her pallor I strangely mistrust: — 

Oh, hasten! — oh, let us not linger! 

Oh, fly! — let us fly! — for we must." 

In terror she spoke, letting sink her 

Wings until they trailed in the dust — 

In agony sobbed letting sink her 

Plumes till they trailed in the dust — 
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust. 

I replied — "This is nothing but dreaming: 
Let us on by this tremulous light! 
Let us bathe in this crystalline light! 

Its Sybilic splendor is beaming 

With Hope and in Beauty to-night : — 
See ! — it flickers up the sky through the 
night! 

Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming 



172 POE'S POEMS. 

And be sure it will lead us aright — 
We safely may trust to a gleaming 
That cannot but guide us aright, 
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the 
night. * 

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her, 
And tempted her out of her gloom — 
And conquered her scruples and gloom ; 

And we passed to the end of the vista, 

But were stopped by the door of a tomb — 
By the door of a legended tomb; 

And I said — *'What is written, sweet sister 
On the door of this legended tomb?" 
She replied — **Ulalume — Ulalume — 
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!" 

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober 

As the leaves that were crisped and sere — 
As the leaves that were withering and sere, 

And I cried — "It was surely October 
On this very night of last year 
That I journeyed— I journeyed down 

here — 
That I brought a dread burden down 

here — 
On this night of all nights in the year, 
Ah, what demon has tempted me here? 

Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber — 
This misty mid region of Weir. 

Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber, 
This ghoul-haunted v/oodland of Weir." 



POE'S POEMS. 173 

THE BELLS. 



Hear the sledges with the bells — 
Silver bells! 
V hat a world of merriment their melody fore- 
tells! 
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, 

In the icy air of night! 
While the stars that oversprinkle 
All the heavens seem to twinkle 

With the crystalline delight; 
Keeping time, time, time. 
In a sort of Runic rhyme. 
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells 
From the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells— 
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. 

II. 

Hear the mellow wedding bells, 
Golden bells! 
What a world of happiness their harmony fore- 
tells! 
Through the balmy air of night 
How they ring out their delight! 
From the molten-golden notes, 

And all in tune, 
What a liquid ditty floats 
To the turtle-dove that listens, while 
she gloats 
On the moon! 
Oh, trom out the sounding cells, 



174 POE'S POEMS. 

What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! 
How it swells! 
How it dwells 
On the Future ! how it tells 
Of the rapture that impels 
To the swinging and the ringing 
Of the bells, bells, bells, 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells— 
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells. 

' III. 

Hear the loud alarum bells — 
Brazen bells! 
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency 
tells! 
In the startled ear of night 
How they scream out their affright! 
Too much horrified to speak. 
They can only shriek, shriek, 
Out of tune. 
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the 

fire, 
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and 
frantic fire 

Leaping higher, higher, higher, 
With a desperate desire. 
And a resolute endeavor 
Now — now to sit or never. 
By the side of the pale-faced moon. 
Oh, the bells, bells, bells! 
y What a tale their terror tells 

Of Despair! 
How they clang, and clash, and roar. 

/ 



POE'S POEMS. 175 

What a horror they outpour 
On the bosom cf the palpitating air! 
Yet the ear it fully knows, 
By the twanging, 
And the clanging, 
How the danger ebbs and flows: 
Yet the ear distinctly tells, 
In the jangling, 
And the wrangling, 
How the danger sinks and swells, 
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of 
the bells — 
Of the bells— 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells— 
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells! 

IV. 

Hear the tolling of the bells — 
Iron bells! 
What a world of solemn thought their monody 
compels! 
In the silence of the night, 
How we shiver with affright, 
At the melancholy menace of their tone; 
For every sound that floats 
From the rust within their throats 

Is a groan. 
And the people — ah, the people — 
They that dwell up in the steeple. 

All alone. 
And who tolling, tolling, tolling. 

In that mutfled monotone, 
Feel a glory in so rolling 



176 POE'S POEMS 

On the human heart a stone — 
They are neither man nor woman — 
They are neither brute nor human — 
They are Ghouls: 
And their king it is who tolls; 
And he rolls, rolls, rolls, 

Rolls 
A paean from the bells! 
And his merry bosom swells 
With the paean of the bells! 
And he dances, and he yells; 
Keeping time, time, time, 
In a sort of Runic rhyme. 
To the psean of the bells— 
Of the bells: 
Keeping time, time, time 
In a sort of Runic rhyme. 

To the throbbing of the bells-* 
Of the bells, bells, bells— 

To the sobbing of the bells; 
Keeping time, time, time. 

As he knells, knells, knells, 
In a happy Runic rhyme, 

To the rolling of the bells — 
Of the bells, bells, bells—. 
To the tolling of the bells — 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells- 
Bells, bells, bells — 
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. 

AN ENIGMA. 

"Seldom we find," says Solomon Don Dunce^ 
**Half an ideal in the profoundest sonnet. 



POE'S POEMS. 177 

Through all the flimsy things we see at once 
As easily as through a Naples bonnet — 
Trash of all trash ! — how can a lady don it? 
Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff — 
Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff 
Twirls into trunk-paper the while you 
con it." 
And, veritably, Sol is right enough. 
The general tuckermanities are arrant 
Bubbles — ephemeral and so transparent — 

But this is, now, — you may depend upon it- 
Stable, opaque, immortal — all by dint 
Of the dear names that lie concealed within 't. 

ANNABEL LEE. 

It was many and many a year ago, 

In a kingdom by the sea, 
That a maiden there lived whom you may know 

By the name of Annabel Lee ; 
And this maiden she lived with no other 
thought 

Than to love and be loved by me. 

I was a child and she was a child, 

In this kingdom by the sea 
But we loved with a love that was more than 
love — 

I and my Annabel Lee ; 
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven 

Coveted her and me. 

And this was the reason that, long ago, 
In this kingdom by the sea, 



178 POE'S POEMS. 

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling 

My beautiful Annabel Lee; 
So that her highborn kinsman came 

And bore her away from me. 
To shut her up in a sepulcher 

In this kingdom by the sea. 

The angels, not half so happy in heaven, 
Went envying her and me — 

Yes! — that was the reason (as all men know, 
In this kingdom by the sea) 

That the wind came out of the cloud by night. 
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. 

But our love it was stronger by far than the 
love 

Of those who were older than we — 

Of many far wiser than we — 
And neither the angels in heaven above, 

Nor the demons down under the sea, 
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul 

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee. 

For the moon never beams, without bringing 
me dreams 

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee : 
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright 
eyes 
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; 
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the 

side 
Of my darling — my darling — my life and my 
bride 

In the sepulcher there by the sea, 
In her tomb by the sounding sea. 



FOE'S POEMS. 179 

TO MY MOTHER. 

Because I feel that in the Heavens above, 

The angels, whispering to one another. 
Can find, among their burning terms of love, 

None so devotional as that of "Mother," 
Therefore by that dear name I long have 
called you — 

You who are more than mother unto me, 
And fill my heart of hearts, where death in- 
stalled you, 

In setting my Virginia's spirit free. 
My mother — my own mother, who died early, 

Was but the mother of myself; but you 
Are mother to the one I loved so dearly, 

And thus are dearer than the mother I 
knew 
By that infinity with which my wife 

Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life. 

THE HAUNTED PALACE. 

In the greenest of our valleys 
By good angels tenanted. 

Once a fair and stately palace — 
Radiant palace — reared its head. 

In the monarch Thought's dominion- 
It stood there ! 

Never seraph spread a pinion! 
Over fabric half so fair! 

Banners yellow, glorious, golden, 

On its roof did float and flow, 
(This — all this — was in the olden 

Time long ago,} 



180 POE'S POEMS. 

And eveiy gentle air that dallied, 

In that sweet day, 
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, 

A winged odor went away. 

Wanderers in that happy valley, 

Through two luminous windows, saw 
Spirits moving musically, 

To a lutes' swell-tuned law, 
Round about a throne where, sitting 

(Porphyrogene !) 
In state his glory well befitting, 

The ruler of the realm was seen. 

And all with pearl and ruby glowing 

Was the fair palace door. 
Through which came flowing, flowing, flow- 
ing 

And sparkling evermore, 
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty 

Was but to sing, 
In voices of surpassing beauty. 

The wit and wisdom of their king. 

But evil things, in robes of sorrow. 

Assailed the monarch's high estate. 
(Ah, let us monrn ! — for never morrow 

Shall dawn upon him desolate!) 
And round about his home the glory 

That blushed and bloomed. 
Is but a dim-remembered story 

Of the old time entombed. 

And travelers, now, within that valley, 
Through the red-litten windows see 



POE'S POEMS. 181 

Vast forms, that move fantastically ' 

To the discordant melody, 
While, like a ghastly rapid river, 

Through the pale door 
A hideous throng rush out forever 

And laugh — but smile no more. 

THE CONQUEROR WORM. 

Lo! 'tis a gala night 

Within the lonesome latter years; 
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight 

In veils, and drowned in tears, 
Sit in a theater, to see 

A play of hopes and fears. 
While the orchestra breathes fitfully 

The music of the spheres. 

Mimes, in the form of God on high, 

Mutter and mumble low, 
And hither and thither fly — 

Mere puppets they, who come and go 
At bidding of vast formless things 

That shift the scenery to and fro, 
Flapping from out their Condor wings 

Invisible Woe! 

That motely drama — oh, be sure 

It shall not be forgot ! 
With its Phantom chased for evermore, 

By a crowd that seize it not, 
Through a circle that ever returneth in 

To the self-same spot. 
And much of Madness, and more of Sin 

And Horror the soul of the plot. 



182 t>OE'S l>OEMS. 

But see, amid the mimic rout 

A crawling shape intrude! 
A blood-red thing that writhes from out 

The scenic solitude ! 
It writhes! — it writhes! — with mortal pangs 

The mimes become its food, 
And the angels sob at vermin fangs 

In human gore imbued. 

Out — out are the lights — out all! 

And, over each quivering form, 
The curtain, a funeral pall, 

Comes down with the rush of a storm, 
And the angels, all pallid and wan. 

Uprising, unveiling, affirm 
That the play is the tragedy, "Man," 

And its hero the Conqueror Worm, 

TO F S S. O D. 

Thou wouldst be loved? — then let thy heart 

From its present pathway part not ! 
Being everything which now thou art, 

Be nothing which thou art not. 
So with the world thy gentle ways. 

Thy grace, thy more than beauty, 
Shall be an endless theme of praise, 

And love — a simple duty. 

TO ONE IN PARADISE. 

Thou wast that all to me, love. 
For which my soul did pine — 

A green isle in the sea, love, 
A fountain and a shrine, 



POE'S POEMS. 183 

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, 
And all the flowers were mine. 

Ah, dream too bright to last! 

Ah, starry Hope ! that didst arise 
But to be overcast! 

A voice from out the Future cries, 
**On! on!"— but o'er the Past 

(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies 
Mute, motionless, aghast! 

For, alas! alas! with me 

The light of Life is o'er! 
*'No more — no more — no more! — '* 

(Such language holds the solemn sea 
To the sands upon the shore) 

Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, 
Or the stricken eagle soar! 

And all my days are trances, 

And all my nightly dreams 
Are where thy dark eye glances, 

And where thy footstep gleams — 
In what ethereal dances. 

By what eternal streams. 

THE VALLEY OF UNREST. 

Once it smiled a silent dell 
Where the people did not dwell; 
They had gone unto the wars. 
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars, 
Nightly, from their azure towers, 
To keep watch above the flowers, 
In the midst of which all day 



184 POE'S POEMS. 

The red sun-light lazily lay. 
Now each visitor shall confess 
The sad valley's restlessness. 
Nothing there is motionless — 
Nothing save the airs that brood 
Over the magic solitude. 

Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees 

That palpitate like the chill seas 

Around the misty Hebrides! 

Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven 

That rustle through the unquiet Heaven 

Uneasily, from morn till even. 

Over the violets there that lie 

In myriad types of the human eye — 

Over the lilies there that wave 

And weep above a nameless grave! 

They wave : — from out their fragrant tops 

Eternal dews come down in drops. 

They weep: — from off their delicate stems 

Perennial tears descend in gems. 

THE CITY IN THE SEA. 

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne 

In a strange city lying alone 

Far down within the dim West, 

Where the good and the bad and the worst 

and the best 
Have gone to their eternal rest. 
Their shrines and palaces and towers 
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!) 
Resemble nothing that is ours. 
Around, by lifting winds forgot, 



POE'S POEMS. 185 

Resignedly beneath the sky 
The melancholy waters lie. 

No rays from the holy heaven come down 
On the long night-time of that town; 
But light from out the lurid sea 
Streams up the turrets silently — 
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free — 
Up domes — up spires — up kingly halls — 
Up fanes — up Babylon-like walls — 
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers 
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers — 
Up many and many a marvelous shrine 
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine 
The viol, the violet, and the vine. 
Resignedly beneath the sky 
The melancholy waters lie. 
So blend the turrets and shadows there 
That all seem pendulous in air, 
While from a proud tower in the town 
Death looks gigantically down. 

There open fanes and gaping graves 
Yawn level with the luminous waves 
But not the riches there that lie 
In each idol's diamond eye — 
Not the gayly-jeweled dead 
Tempt the waters from their bed; 
For no ripples curl, alas! 
Along that wilderness of glass — 
No swellings tell that winds may be 
Upon some far-off happier sea — 
No heavings hint that winds have been 
On seas less hideously serene. 



186 POE'S POEMS. 

But lo, a Stir is in the air ! 
The wave — there is a movement there! 
As if the towers had thrust aside, 
In slightly sinking, the dull tide — 
As if their tops had feeblj^ given 
A void within the filmy Heaven. 
The waves have now a redder glow— 
The hours are breathing faint and low — 
And when, amid no earthly moans, 
Down, down that town shall settle hence, 
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, 
Shall do it reverence. 



THE SLEEPER. 

At midnight, in the month of June, 
I stand beneath the mystic moon. 
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim, 
Exhales from out her golden rim, 
And, softly dripping, drop by drop, 
Upon the quiet mountain top, 
Steals drowsily and musically 
Into the universal valley. 
The rosemary nods upon the grave; 
The lily lolls upon the wave ; 
Wrapping the fog about its breast. 
The ruin molders into rest ; 
Looking like Lethe, see ! the lake 
A conscious slumber seems to take, 
And would not, for the world, awake. 
All Beauty sleeps ! — and lo ! where lies 
Her casement open to the skies, 
Irene, with her Destinies! 



POE'S POEMS. 187 

Oh, lady bright ! can it be right — 

This window open to the night? 

The wanton airs, from the tree-top, 

Laughingly through the lattice drop — 

The bodiless airs, a wizard rout. 

Flit through thy chamber in and out 

And wave the curtain canopy 

So fitfully — so fearfully — 

Above the closed and fringed lid 

'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid 

That, o'er the floor and down the wall, 

Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall ! 

Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear? 

Why and what art thou dreaming here? 

Sure thou art come o'er far-off seas, 

A wonder to these garden trees! 

Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress! 

Strange, above all, thy length of tress, 

And this all solemn silentness! 

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep, 
Which is enduring, so be deep! 
Heaven have her in its sacred keep 
This chamber changed for one more holy. 
This bed for one more melancholy, 
I pray to God that she may lie 
Forever with unopened eye, 
While the dim sheeted ghosts go by! 

My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep, 

As it is lasting, so be deep! 

Soft may the worms about her creep! 

Far in the forest, dim and old, 

For her may some tall vault unfold — 



188 POE'S POEMS. 

Some vault that oft hath flung its black 
And winged pannels fluttering back, 
Triumphant, o'er the crested palls, 
Of her grand family funerals- 
Some sepulcher, remote, alone, 
Against whose portal she hath thrown, 
In childhood, many an idle stone — 
Some tomb from out whose sounding door 
She ne'er shall force an echo more. 
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin 
It was the dead who groaned within. 

SILENCE. 

There are some qualities — some incorporate 
things, 
That have a double life, which thus is made 
A type of that twin entity which springs 

From matter and light, evinced in solid and 
shade. 
There is a two-fold Silence — sea and shore — 
Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places. 
Newly with grass o'ergrown; some solemn 
graces. 
Some human memories and tearful lore, 
Render him terrorless: his name's *' No More, " 
He is the corporate Silence; dread him not! 

No power hath he of evil in himself, 
But should some urgent tate (untimely lot!) 

Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf, 
That haunteth the lone regions where hath 

trod 
No foot of man,) commend thyself to God! 



POE'S POEMS. 189 

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM. 

Take this kiss npon the brow! 

And, in parting from you now, 

Thus much let me avow — 

You are not wrong, who deem 

That my days have been a dream; 

Yet if hope has flown away 

In a night, or in a day, 

In a vision, or in none, 

Is it therefore the less gone? 

All that we see or seem 

Is but a dream within a dream. 

I stand amid the roar 
Of a surf- tormented shore. 
And I hold with my hand 
Grains of the golden sand — 
How few ! yet how they creep 
Through my fingers to the deep. 
While I weep — while I weep! 
O God! can I not grasp 
Them with a tighter clasp? 
O God ! can I not save 
One from the pitiless wave? 
Is all that we see or seem 
But a dream within a dream? 

DREAMLAND. 

By a route obscure and lonely, 
Haunted by ill angels only. 
Where an Eidolon, named Night, 
On a black throne reigns upright, 
I have reached these lands but newly 



1»U POE'S POEMS. 

From an ultimate dim Thule — 
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime 
Out of Space — out of Time. 

Bottomless vales and boundless floods, 
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods, 
With forms that no man can discover 
For the dews that drip all over; 
Mountains toppling evermore 
Into seas without a shore; 
Seas that restlessly aspire. 
Surging, unto skies of fire ; 
Lakes that endlessly outspread 
Their lone waters — lone and dead, — 
Their still waters — still and chilly 
With the snows of the lolling lily. 

By the lakes that thus outspread 
Their lone waters, lone and dead — 
Their sad waters, sad and chilly 
With the snows of the lolling lily, — 
By the mountains — near the river 
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever, — 
By the gray woods, — by the swamp 
Where the toad and the newt encamp, — 
By the dismal tarns and pools 
Where dwell the Ghouls — 
By each spot the most unholy — 
In each nook most melancholy, — 
There the traveler meets aghast 
Sheeted Memories of the Past — 
Shrouded forms that start and sigh 
As they pass the wanderer by — 
White-robed forms of friends long given, 
In agony, to the Earth — and Heaven. 



POE'S POEMS. 191 

For the heart whose woes are legion 

'Tis a peaceful, soothing region — 

For the spirit that walks in shadow 

'Tis — oh 'tis an Eldorado! 

But the traveler, traveling through it, 

May not — dare not openly view it; 

Never its mysteries are exposed 

To the weak human eye unclosed ; 

So wills its King, who hath forbid 

The uplifting of the fringed lid; 

And thus the sad Soul that here passes 

Beholds it but through darkened glasses. 

By a route obscure and lonely, 

Haunted by ill angels only, 

Where an Eidolon, named Night, 

On a black throne reigns upright, 

I have wandered home but newly 

From this ultimate dim Thule. 

TO ZANTE. 

Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers, 

Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take! 
How many memories of what radiant hours 

At sight of thee and thine at once awake! 
How many scenes of what departed bliss! 

How many thoughts of what entombed 
hopes ! 
How many visions of a maiden that is 

No more — no more upon thy verdant slopes! 
No more! alas, that magical sad sound 

Transforming all ! Thy charms shall please 
no more ! 
Thy memory no more! Accursed ground 



192 POE'S POEMS. 

Henceforth I hold thy flower-enameled shore, 
O hyacinthine isle ! O purple Zante ! 
"Isola d'oro! Fior di Levantea!" 

EULALIE. 

I dwelt alone 
In a world of moan, 
And my soul was a stagnant tide, 
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my 

blushing bride — 
Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became 
my smiling bride. 

Ah, less — less bright 
The stars of the night 
Than the eyes of the radiant girl! 
And never a flake 
That the vapor can make 
With the moon-tints of purple and 
pearl, 
Can vie with the modest Eulalie 's most unre- 
garded curl — 
Can compare with the brig'ht-eyed Eulalie's 
most humble and careless curl. 

Now Doubt — now Pain 
Come never again. 
For her soul gives me sigh for sigh, 
And all day long 
Shines, bright and strong, 
Astarte within the sky, 
While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her 

matron eye — 
While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her 
violent eye. 



POE'S POEMS. 193 

ELDORADO. 

Gaily bedight, 

A gallant knight, 
In sunshine and in shadow, 

Had journeyed long, 

Singing a song, 
In search of Eldorado. 

But he grew old — 

This knight so bold — 
And o'er his heart a shadow 

Fell as he found 

No spot of ground 
That looked like Eldorado. 

And, as his strength 

Failed him at length. 
He met a pilgrim shadow — > 

'* Shadow," said he, 

'* Where can it be — 
This land of Eldorado?" 

**Over the Mountains 

Of the Moon, 
Down the Valley of the Shadow, 

Ride, boldly ride," 

The shade replied, — 
•*If you seek for Eldorado!" 

ISRAFEL.* 
In Heaven a spirit doth dwell 

"~*And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, 
and who has the sweetest voice of all God's creatures. 
—Koran. 
13 roe's Poems. 



194 POE'S POEMS. 

** Whose heart-strings are a lute;** 
None sing so wildly well 
As the angel Israfel, 
And the giddy stars (so legends tell) 
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell 

Of his voice, all mute. 

Tottering above 

In her highest noon, 

The enamored moon 
Blushes with love, 

While, to listen, the red levin 

(With the rapid Pleiads, even, 

Which were seven,) 

Pauses in Heaven. 

And they say (the starry choir 
And the other listening things) 

That Israfeli's fire 

Is owing to that lyre 

By which he sits and sings — 

The trembling living wire 
Of those unusual strings. 

But the skies that angels trod. 

Where deep thoughts are a duty— 

Where Love's a grown up God — 
Where the Houri glances are 

Imbued with all the beauty 
Which we worship in a star. 

Therefore, thou art not wrong, 

Israfeli, who despisest 
An unimpassioned song; 
To thee the laurels belong, 



POE'S POEMS. 195 

Best bard, because the wisest! 
Merrily live, and long 1 

The ecstasies above 

With thy burning measures suit — 

Thy grief, thy joy. thy hr.te, ..ay love, 
With the fervor /thy lute- 
Well may the stars be mute ! 

Yes, Heaven is thine, but this 
Is a world of sweets and sours.. 
Our flowers are merely — flowers, 

And the shadow of thy perfect bliss 
Is the sunshine of ours. 

If I could dwell 
Where Israfel 

Hath dwelt, and he where I, 
He might not sing so wildly well 

A mortal melody, 
While a bolder note than this might swell 

From my lyre within the sky. 

FOR ANNIE. 

Thank Heaven! the crisis- 

The danger is past, 
And the lingering illness 

Is over at last — 
And the fever called '* Living" 

Is conquered at last. 

Sadly, I know 

I am shorn of my strength, 
And no muscle I move 



196 POE'S POEMS. 

As I lie at full length— 
But no matter ! — I feel 
I am better at length. 

And I rest so composed, 

Now, in my bed, 
That any beholder 

Might fancy me dead — 
Might start at beholding me, 

Thinking me dead. 

The moaning and groaning, 
The sighing and sobbing, 

Are quieted now, 

With that horrible throbbing 

At heart : — ah, that horrible, 
Horrible throbbing! 

The sickness — the nausea — 

The pitiless pain — 
Have ceased, with the fever 

That maddened my brain — 
With the fever called ** Living*' 

That burned in my brain. 

And oh ! of all tortures 

That torture the worst 
Has abated — the terrible 

Torture of thirst 
For the naphthaline river 

Of Passion accurst: — 
I have drank of a water 

That quenches all thirst:— 

Of a water that flows, 
With a lullaby sound, 



POE'S POEMS, 197 

From a spring but a very few 

Feet under ground — 
From a cavern not very far 

Down under ground. 

And ah ! let it never 

Be foolishly said 
That my room it is gloomy 

And narrow my bed; 
For man never slept 

In a different bed — 
And, to sleep, you must slumber 

In just such a bed. 

My tantalized spirit 

Here blandly reposes. 
Forgetting, or never 

Regretting its roses — 
Its old agitations 

Of myrtles and roses; 

For now, while so quietly 

Lying, it fancies 
A holier odor 

About it, of pansies — 
A rosemary odor, 

Commingled with pansies — 
With rue and the beautiful 

Puritan pansies. 

And so it lies happily, 

Bathing in many 
A dream of the truth 

And the beauty of Annie 



108 POE'S POEMS. 

Drowned in a bath 
Of the tresses of Annie. 

She tenderly kissed me, 

She fondly caressed, 
And then I fell gently 

To sleep on her breast — 
Deeply to sleep 

From the heaven of her breast. 

When the light was extinguished, 

She covered me warm 
And she prayed to the angels 

To keep me from harm — 
To the queen of the angels 

To shield me from harm. 

And I lie so composedly. 

Now, in my bed, 
(Knowing her love) 

That you fancy me dead— 
And I rest so contentedly, 

Now in my bed, 
(With her love at my breast) 

That you fancy me dead — 
That you shudder to look at me, 

Thinking me dead: 

But my heart it is brighter 

Than all of the many 
Stars in the sky, 

For it sparkles with Annie- — 
It glows with the light 

Of the love of my Annie — 
With the thought ot the light 

Of the eyes of my Annie. 



POE'S POEMS. 199 

TO- -. 

I heed not that my earthly lot 

Hath— little of Earth in it— 
That years of love have been forgot 

In the hatred of a minute : — 
I mourn not that the desolate 

Are happier, sweet, than I, 
But that you sorrow for my fate 

Who am a passer by. 

BRIDAL BALLAD. 

The ring is on my hand, 

And the wreath is on my brow; 

Satins and jewels grand 

Are all at my command, 
And I am happy now. 

And my lord he loves me well ; 

But, when first he breathed his vow, 
I felt my bosom swell — 
For the words rang as a knell. 
And the voice seemed his who fell 
In the battle down the dell, 

And who is happy now. 

But he spoke to re-assure me, 

And he kissed my pallid brow, 
While a reverie came o'er me. 
And to the church-yard bore me, 
And I sighed to him before me. 
Thinking him dead D'Elormie, 
*'0h, I am happy now!" 



200 POE'S POEMS. 

And thus the words were spoken, 

And this the plighted vow, 
And, though my faith be broken, 
And, though my heart be broken, 
Behold the golden token 
That proves me happy now! 

Would God I could awaken! 

For I dream I know not how. 
And mj^ soul is sorely shaken 
Lest an evil step be taken, — 
Lest the dead who is forsaken 

May not be happy now. 

TO F . 



Beloved! amid the earnest woes 

That crowd around my earthly path- 

(Drear path, alas! where grows 

Not even one lonely rose) — 
My soul at least a solace hath 

In dreams of thee, and therein knows 

An Eden of bland repose. 

And thus thy memory is to me 
Like some enchanted far-off isle 

In some tumultuous sea — 

Some ocean throbbing far and free 
With storms — but where meanwhile 

Serenest skies continually 

Just o'er that one bright island smile- 



POE'S POEMS. 201 

SCENES FROM *'POLITIAN." 

AN UNPUBLISHED DRAMA. 



ROME.— A Hall in a Palace. Alessandra and 
Castiglione. 

Alessandra. Thou art sa*^!, Castiglione. 

Castiglione. Sad! — not I. 
Oh, I'm the happiest, happiest man in Rome! 
A few days more, thou knowest, my Ales- 
sandra, 
Will make thee mine. Oh, I am very happy! 

Aless. Methinks thou hast a singular way 
of showing 
Thy happiness! — what ails thee, cousin of 

mine? 
Why didst thou sigh so deeply? 

Cas. Did I sigh? 
I was not conscious of it. It is a fashion. 
A silly — a most silly fashion I have 
When I am very happy. Did I sigh? (sighing), 

Aless. Thou didst. Thou art not well. 
Thou hast indulged 
Too much of late, and I am vexed to see it. 
Late hours and wine, Castiglione, — these 
Will ruin thee! thou art already altered — 
Thy looks are haggard — nothing so wears away 
The constitution as late hours and wine. 

Cas. (musing.) Nothing, fair cousin, noth- 
ing — not even deep sorrow — 
Wears it away like evil hours and wine. 
I will amend. 

14 Foe's Poems. 



202 POE'S POEMS. 

Aless. Do it ! I would have thee drop 
Th)^ riotous company, too — fellows low-born — • 
111 suit the like with old Di Broglio's heir 
And Alessandra's husband. 
Cas. I will drop them. 

Aless. Thou wilt — thou must. Attend 
thou also more 
To thy dress and equipage — they are over plain 
For thy lofty rank and fashion — much depends 
Upon appearances. 
Cas. I'll see to it. 

Aless. Then see to it ! — pay more attention, 
sir, 
To a becoming carriage — much thou wantest 
in dignity. 
Cas. Much, much, oh much I want 

In proper dignity. 
Aless. (haughtily.) Thou mockest me, sir! 
Cas. (abstractedly.) Sweet, gentle Lalage! 
Aless. Heard I aright? 
I speak to him — he speaks of Lalage ! 
Sir Count! (places her hand on his shoulder) 

what art thou dreaming? he's not well! 
What ails thee, sir? 

Cas. (starting.) Cousin! fair cousin! — 
madam ! 
I crave thy pardon — indeed I am not well. 
Your hand from off my shoulder, if you please. 
This air is most oppressive! — Madam — the 
Duke! 

Enter Di Broglio. 
Di Broglio. My son, I've news for thee! — 
hey? — what's the matter? (observing 
Alessandra.) 



POE'S POEMS. 203 

I* the pouts? Kiss her, Castiglione! kiss her, 
You dog! and make it up, I say, this minute! 
I've news for you both. Politian is expected 
Hourly in Rome — Politian, Earl of Leicester! 
We'll have him at the wedding. 'Tis his first 

visit 
To the' imperial city. 

Aless. What? Politian 
Of Britain, Earl of Leicester? 

Di Brog. The same, my love. 
We'll have him at the wedding. A man quite 

young 
In years, but gray in fame. I have not seen 

him, 
But Rumor speaks of him as of a prodigy 
Pre-eminent in arts and arms, and wealth, 
And high descent. We'll have him at the 
wedding. 

Aless. I have heard much of this Politian. 
Gay, volatile and giddy — is he not? 
And little given to thinking. 

Di Brog. Far from it, love. 
No branch, they say, of all philosophy 
So deep abstruse ke has not mastered it. 
Learned as few are learned. 

Aless. 'Tis very strange! 
I have known men have seen Politian 
And sought his company. They speak of him 
As one who entered madly into life. 
Drinking the cup of pleasure to the dregs. 

Cas. Ridiculous! Now I have seen Politian 
And know him well — nor learned nor mirthful 
he. 



204 POE'S POEMS. 

He is a dreamer and a man shut out 
From common passions. 

Di Brog. Children, we disagree. 
Let us go forth and taste the fragrant air 
Of the garden. Did I dream, or did I hear 
Politian was a melancholy man? (exeunt.) 

II. 

ROME. — A lady's apartment, with a window open, and 
looking into a garden. Lalage, in deep mourning, 
reading at a table on which lie some books and a 
hand-mirror. In the background, Jacinta (a servant- 
maid) leans carelessly upon a chair. 

Lai. Jacinta! is it thou? 
Jac. (pertly.) Yes, ma'am, I'm here. 
Lai. I did not know, Jacinta, you were in 
waiting. 
Sit down ! — let not my presence trouble you — 
Sit down! — for I am humble, most humble. 
Jac. (aside.) 'Tis time. 

(Jacinta seats herself in a side-long 
manner upon the chair, resting her 
elbows upon the back, and regarding 
her mistress with a contemptuous 
look. Lalage continues to read.) 
Lai. **It in another climate," so he said, 
**Bore a bright golden flower, but not i' this 
soil!" 

(pauses — turns over some leaves and re- 
sumes.) 
**No lingering winters there, nor snow, nor 

shower — 
But Ocean ever to refresh mankind 



POE'S POEMS. 205 

••Breathes the shrill spirit of the western 

wind. 
Oh, beautiful !— most beautiful!— how like 
To what my fevered soul doth dream of 

Heaven! 
O happy land! (pauses.) She died!— the 

maiden died! 
O still more happy maiden who couldst die ! 
Jacinta! 

(Jacinta returns no answer, and Lalage 
presently resumes.) 
Again ! — a similar tale 
Told of a beauteous dame beyond the sea! 
Thus speaketh one Ferdinand in the words of 

the plav — 
**She died full young"— one Bossola answers 

him — 
*'I think not so— her felicity 
"Seemed to have years too many"— Ah, luck- 
less lady! 
Jacinta (still no answer.) 

Here's a far sterner story 
But like— oh, very like in its despair— 
Of that Egyptian queen, winning so easily 
A thousand hearts— losing at length her own. 
She died. Thus endeth the history— and her 

maids 
Lean over her and weep — two gentle maids 
With gentle names — Eiros and Charmion! 

Rainbow and Dove! Jacinta! 

Jac. (pettishly.) Madam, what is it? 
Lai. Wilt thou, my good Jacinta, be so kind 
• As go down in the library and bring me 
Tb^ H'Oly Evangelists. 



206 POE'S POEMS. 

Jac. Pshaw! (exit.) 
Lai. If there be balm 
For the wounded spirit in Gilead it is there! 
Dew in the night-time of my bitter trouble 
Will there be found — "dew sweeter far than 

that 
Which hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon 
hill." 

(re-enter Jacinta, and throws a volume 
on the table.) 
There, ma'am, 's the book. Indeed she is very 
troublesome, (aside.) 
Lai. (astonished.) What didst thou say, 
Jacinta? Have done aught 
To grieve thee or to vex thee? — I am sorry. 
For thou hast served me long and ever been 
Trustworthy and respectful. (resumes her 
reading.) 
Jac. I can't believe 
She has any more jewels — no — no — she gave 
me all. (aside.) 
Lai. What didst thou say, Jacinta? Now I 
bethink me 
Thou hast not spoken lately of thy wedding. 
How fares good Ugo? — and when is it to be'? 
Can I do aught? — is there no further aid 
Thou needest, Jacinta? 

Jac. Is there no farther aid? 
That's meant for me. (aside) I'm sure, 

Madam, you need not 
Be always throwing those jewels in my teeth. 
Lai. Jewels! Jacinta, — now indeed, Jacinta, 
I thought not of the jewels. 
Jac. Oh: perhaps not! 



POE'S POEMS. 207 

But then I might have sworn it. After all, 
There's Ugo says the ring is only paste, 
For he's sure the Count Castiglione never 
Would have given a real diamond to such as 

you; 
And at the best I'm certain, Madato, you 

cannot 
Have use for jewels now. But I might have 

sworn it. (exit.) 

(Lalage bursts into tears and leans her 

head upon the table — after a short 

pause raises it.) 

Lai. Poor Lalage! — and is it come to this? 

Thy servant maid ! — but courage! — 'tis but a 

viper 
Whom thou hast cherished to sting thee to the 

soul! (taking up the mirror.) 

Ha! here at least's a friend — too much a 

friend 
In earlier days — a friend will not deceive thee. 
Fair mirror and true ! now tell me (for thou 

canst) 
A tale — a pretty tale — and heed thou not 
Though it be rife with woe. It answers me. 
It speaks of sunken eyes, and wasted cheeks, 
And Beauty long deceased — remembers me 
Of joy departed — Hope, the Seraph Hope, 
Inurned and entombed! — now, in a tone 
Low, sad, and solem.n, but most audible. 
Whispers of early grave untimely yawning 
For ruined maid. Fair mirror and true ! thou 

liest not! 
Thou hast no end to gain — no heart to break — 
Castiglione lied who said he loved 



208 FOE'S POEMS, 

Thou true — he false!— false!— false! 

(while she speaks, a monk enters her 
apartment, and approaches unobserved.) 
Monk. Refuge thou hast, 
Sweet daughter! in Heaven. Think of eternal 

things ! 
Give up thy soul to penitence, and pray! 
Lai. (arising hurriedly, ) I cannot pray ! — 
My soul is at war with God! 
The frightful sounds of merriment below 
Disturbs my senses — go! I cannot pray — 
The sweet airs from the garden worry me! 
Thy presence grieves me — go! — thy priestly 

raiment 
Fills me with dread — thy ebony crucifix 
With horror and awe ! 

Monk. Think of thy precious soul ! 
Lai. Think of my early days! — think of 
my father 
And mother in Heaven! think of our quiet 

home, 
And the rivulet that ran before the door ! 
Think of my little sisters ! — think of them ! 
And think of me! — think of my trusting love 
And confidence — his vows — my ruin — think — 
think 

Of my unspeakable misery! begone! 

Vet stay! yet stay! — what was it thou saidst 

of prayer 
And patience? Didst thou not speak of faith 
And vows before the throne? 
Monk. I did. 
Lai. 'Tis well 



POE'S POEMS. 209 

There is a vow were fitting should be made — 
A solemn vow. 

Monk. Daughter, this zeal is well! 

Lai. Father, this zeal is anything but well ! 
Hast thou a crucifix fit for this thing? 
A crucifix whereon to register 
This sacred vow? (he hands her his own.) 
Not that— Oh! no!— no I— no— ! (shuddering.) 
Not that! Not that— I tell thee, holy man, 
Thy raiments and thy ebony cross affright me! 
Stand back ! I have a crucifix myself, — 
I have a crucifix! Methinks 'twere fitting. 
The deed — the vow — the symbol of the deed— 
And the deed's register should tally, father! 

(draws a cross handled dagger and raises 
on high.) 
Behold the cross wherewith a vow like mine 
Is written in Heaven! 

Monk. Thy words are madness, daughter, 
And speaks a purpose unholy — thy lips are 

livid — 
Thine eyes are wild — tempt not the wrath 

divine ! 
Pause ere too late ! — oh be not — be not rash ! 
Swear not the oath — oh swear it not ! 

Lai. 'Tis sworn! 

m. 

An apartment in a palace. Politian and Baldazzar. 

Baldazzar. Arouse thee now, Politian! 
Thou must not — nay indeed, indeed, thou 
shalt not 



210 POE'S POEMS. 

Give way unto these humors. Be thyself! 
Shake off the idle fancies that beset thee. 
And live for now thou diest! 

Politian. Not so, Baldazzar! 
Surely I live. 

Bal. Politian, it doth grieve me 
To see thee thus. 

Pol. Baldazzar, it doth grieve me 
To give thee cause for grief, my honored 

friend. 
Command me, sir! what wouldst thou have 

me do? 
At thy behest I will shake off that nature 
Which from my forefathers I did inherit, 
Which with my mother's milk I did imbibe, 
And be no more Politian, but some other. 
Command me, sir! 

Bal. To the field then— to the field- 
To the senate or the field 

Pol. Alas! alas! 
There is an imp would follow me even there! 
There is an imp hath followed me even there I 
There is what voice was that? 

Bal. I heard it not. 
I heard not any voice except thine own, 
And the echo of thine own. 

Pol. Then I but dreamed. 

Bal. Give not thy soul to dreams: the 
camp — the court 
Befit thee — Fame awaits thee — Glory calls — 
And her the trumpet-tongued thou wilt not 

hear 
In hearkening to imaginary sounds 
And phantom voices. 



POE'3 POEMS. 211 

Pol. It is a phantom voice ! 
Didst thou not hear it then? 

Bal. I heard it not. 

Pol. Thou heardst it not! Baldazzar 

speak no more 
To me, Politian, of thy camps and courts 
Oh! I am sick, sick, sick, even unto death, 
Of the hollow and high-sounding vanities 
Of the populous Earth! Bear with me yet 

awhile! 
We have been boys together — school-fellows — 
And now are friends — yet shall not be so long — 
For in the eternal city thou shalt do me 
A kind and gentle office, and a Power — 
A Power august, benignant and supreme — 
Shall then absolve thee of all farther duties 
Unto thy friend. 

Bal. Thou speakest a fearful riddle 
I will not understand,. 

Pol. Yet now as Fate 
Approaches, and the hours are breathing low. 
The sands of Time are changed to golden 

grains, 
And dazzle me, Baldazzar. Alas! alas! 
I cannot die, having within my heart 
So keen a relish for the beautiful 
As hath been kindled within it. Methinks 

the air 
Is calmer now than it was wont to be — 
Rich melodies are floating in the winds — 
A rarer loveliness bedecks the earth — 
And with a holier luster the quiet moon 
Sitteth in Heaven. — Hist! hist! thou canst 
not say 



21k: POE'S POEMS. 

Thou hearest not now, Baldazzar? 
Bal. Indeed I hear not. 
Pol. Not hear it! — listen! now listen! — 
the faintest sound 
And yet the sweetest that ear ever heard! 
A lady's voice! and sorrow in the tone! 
Baldazzar, it oppresses me like a spell! 
Again! — again! — how solemnly it falls 
Into my heart of hearts ! that eloquent voice 

Surely I never heard — yet it were well 
Had I but heard it with its thrilling tones 
In earlier days ! 

Bal. I myself hear it now. 
Be still ! — the voice, if I mistake not greatly, 
Proceeds from yonder lattice —which you may 

see 
Very plainly through the window — it belongs, 
Does it not? unto this palace of the Duke. 
The singer is undoubtedly beneath 
The roof of his Excellency — and perhaps 
Is even that Alessandra of whom he spoke 
As the betrothed of Castiglione, 
His son and heir. 

Pol. Be still ! — it comes again ! 
Voice "And is thy heart so strong 
(very faintly.) As for to leave me thus 

Who hath loved thee so long 
In wealth and wo among? 
Ana in the heart so strong 
As for to leave me thus? 

Say nay — say nay!" 
, Bal. The song is English, and I oft have 

heard it 
In merry England — never so plaintively — 



POE'S POEMS. 213 

Hist! hist! it comes again! 

Voice "Is it so strong 

(more loudly.) As for to leave me thus 

Who hath loved thee so long 
In wealth and wo among? 
And is thy heart so strong 
As for to leave me thus? 

Say nay — say nay!" 
Bal. *Tis hushed and all is still! 
Pol. All is not still. 
Bal. Let us go down. 
Pol. Go down, Baldazzar, go! 
Bal. The hour is growing late — the Duke 
awaits us, — 
Thy presence is expected in the hall 
Below. What ails thee, Earl Politian? 

Voice *'Who hath loved thee so long, 
(distinctly.) In wealth and wo among, 
And is thy heart so strong? 
Say nay — say nay!" 
Bal. Let us descend! — 'tis time. Politian, 
give 
These fancies to the wind. Remember, pray, 
Your bearing lately savored much of rudeness 
Unto the Duke. Arouse thee! and remember! 
Pol Remember? I do. Lead on! I do 
remember. (gfoing.) 

Let us descend. Believe me I would give, 
Freely would give the broad lands of my earl- 
dom 
To look upon the face hidden by yon lattice — 
"To gaze upon that veiled face, and hear 
Once more that silent tongue." 
Bal. Let me beg you, sir, 



214 POE'S POEMS. 

Descend with me — the Duke may be offended. 
Let us go down, I pray you. 

(Voice loudly.) Say nay! — say nay. 

Pol. (aside.) 'Tis strange! — 'tis very 
strange — methought the voice 
Chimed in with my desires and bade me stay! 
(approaching the window.) 
Sweet voice ! I heed thee, and will surely stay. 
Now be this Fancy, by Heaven, or be it Fate, 
Still will I not descend. Baldazzar, make 
Apology unto the Duke for me; 
I go not down to-night. * 

Bal. Your lordship's pleasure 
Shall be attended to. Good-night, Politian. 

Pol. Good-night, my friend good-night. 

IV. 

The gardens of a palace — Moonlight. Lalage and 
Politian. 

Lalage. And dost thou speak of love 
To me, Politian? — dost thou speak of love 
To Lalage? — ah wo — ah wo is me! 
This mockery is most cruel — most cruel in- 
deed! 
Politian. Weep not! oh, sob not thus! — 
thy bitter tears 
Will madden me. Oh, mourn not, Lalage — 
Be comforted! I know — I know it all. 
And still I speak of love. Look at me, bright- 
est, 
And beautiful Lalage! — turn here thine eyes! 
Thou askest me if I could speak of love, 



FOE'S POEMS. 215 

Knowing what I know, and seeing what I have 

seen. 
Thou askest me that — and thus I answer thee — 
Thus on my bended knee I answer thee. 

(kneeling.) 
Sweet Lalage, I love thee — love thee — love 

thee; 
Thro' good and ill — thro' weal and wo I love 

thee. 
Not mother, with her first-born on her knee, 
Thrills with intenser love than I for thee. 
Not on God's altar, in any time or clime. 
Burned there a holier fire than burneth now 
Within my spirit for thee. And do I love? 

(arising.) 
Even for thy woes I love thee — even for 

thy woes — 
Thy beauty and thy woes. 
Lai. Alas, proud Earl, 
Thou dost forget thyself, remembering me! 
How, in thy father's halls, among the maidens 
Pure and reproachless, of thy princely line, 
Could the dishonored Lalage abide? 
Thy wife, and with a tainted memory — ^ 
My seared and blighted name, how would it tally 
With the ancestral honors of thy house. 
And with thy glory? 

Pol. Speak not to me of glory! 
I hate — I loathe the name; I do abhor 
The unsatisfactory and ideal thing. 
Art thou not Lalage and I Politian? 
Do I not love — art thou not beautiful — 
What need we more? Ha! glory !— now speak 

not of it: 



216 POE'S POEMS. 

By all I hold most sacred and most solemn— 
By all my wishes now — my fears hereafter — 
By all I scorn on earth and hope in heaven 
There is no deed I would more glory in, 
Than in thy cause to scoff at this same glory 
And trample it under foot. What matters it — 
What matters it, my fairest, and my best, 
That we go down unhonored and forgotten 
Into the dust — so we descend together. 
Descend together — and then — and then per- 
chance 

Lai. Why dost thou pause, Politian? 

Pol. And then perchance 
Arise together, Lalage, and roam 
The starry and quiet dwellings of the blest, 
And still 

Lai. Why dost thou pause, Politian? 

Pol. And still together — together. 

Lai. Now Earl of Leicester! 
Thou lovest me, and in m}'- heart of hearts 
I feel thou lovest me truly. 

Pol, Oh, Lalage! (throv/ing himself upon 
his knee.) 
And lovest thou me> 

Lai. Hist! hush! within the gloom 
Of yonder trees methought a figure past — 
A spectral figure, solemn, and slow, and noise- 
less — 
Like the grim shadow Conscience, solemn and 
noiseless. (walks across and returns.) 
I was mistaken — 'twas but a giant bough 
Stirred by the autumn wind. Politian! 

Pol. My Lalage — my love! why art thou 
moved ! 



POE'S POEMS. 217 

Why dost thou turn so pale ! Not Conscience' 

self, 
Far less a shadow which thou likenest to it, 
Should shake the firm spirit thus. But the 

night wind 
Is chilly — and these melancholy boughs 
Throw over all things a gloom. 

Lai. Politian ! 
Thou speakest to me of love. Knowest thou 

the land 
With which all tongues are busy — a land new 

found — 
Miraculously found by one of Genoa — 
A thousand leagues within the golden west? 
A fairy land of flowers, and fruit, and sun^ 

shine, 
And crystal lakes, and overarching forests. 
And mountains, around whose towering sum- 
mits the winds 
Of Heaven untrammeled flow — which air to 

breathe 
Is Happiness now, and will be Freedom here- 
after 
In days that art to come? 

Pol. O, wilt thou — wilt thou 
Fly to that Paradise — my Lalage, wilt thou 
Fly thither with me? There Care shall be for- 
gotten. 
And Sorrow shall be no more, and Eros be all. 
And lite shall then be mine, for I will live 
For thee, and in thine eyes — and thou shalt be 
No more a mourner— but the radiant Joys 
Shall wait upon thee, and the angel Hope 
Attend thee ever; and I will kneel to thee 



POE'S POEMS. 218 

And worship thee, and call thee my beloved, 
My own, my beautiful, my love, my wife. 
Myall: — oh, wilt thou — wilt thou, Lalage, 
Fly thither with me? 

Lai. A deed is to be done — 
Castiglione lives! 

Pol. And he shall die! (exit.) 

Lai. (after a pause.) And — he — shall — 

die ! alas 

Castiglione die! Who spoke the words? 
Where am I?— what was it he said? — Politian! 
Thou art not gone — thou art not gone, Poli- 
tian. 
I feel thou art not gone — yet dare not look, 
Lest I behold thee not ; thou couldst not go 
With those words upon thy lips — O, speak 

to me! 
And let me hear thy voice — one word — one 

word. 
To say thou art not gone, — one little sentence. 
To say how thou dost scorn — how thou dost 

hate 
My womanly weakness. Ha! ha! thou art not 
gone — 

speak to me! I knew thou wouldst not go! 

1 knew thou wouldst not, couldst not, durst 

not go. 
Villain, thou art not gone — thou mockest me! 
And thus I clutch thee — thus! He is gone, 

gone, he is gone — 
Gone — gone. Where am I? 'tis well — 'tis 

very well! 
So that the blade be keen — the blow be sure, 
'Tis well, 'tis very well — alas! alas! 



219 POE'S POEMS. 

V. 

The suburbs. Politian alone. 

Politian. This weakness grows upon me. 
I am faint 
And much 1 fear me ill — it will not do 
To die ere I have lived! — Stay — stay thy hand, 
O Azrael, yet awhile! — Prince of the Powers 
Of Darkness and the Tomb, O pity me! 
O pity me ! let me not perish now, 
In the budding of my Paradisal Hope! 
Give me to live yet — yet a little while : 
Tis I who pray for life — I who so late 
Demanded but to die ! — what sayeth the Count? 

Enter Baldazzar. 

Baldazzar. That knowing no cause of quarrel 

or of feud 
Between the earl Politian and himself, 
He doth decline your cartel. 
Pol. What didst thou say? 
What answer was it you brought me, good 

Baldazzar? 
With what excessive fragrance the zephyr 

comes 
Laden from yonder bowers! — a fairer day, 
Or one more worthy Italy, methinks 
No mortal eyes have seen ! — what said the 

Count? 
Bal. That he, Castiglione, not being aware 
Of any feud existing, or any cause 
Of quarrel between your lordship and himself 
Cannot accept the challenge. 



POE'S POEMS. 220 

Pol. It is most true — 
All this is very true. When saw you, sir, 
When saw you now, Baldazzar, in the frigid 
Ungenial Britain which we left so lately, 
A heaven so calm as this — so utterly free 
From the evil taint of clouds? — and he did say? 

Bal. No more, my lord, than 1 have told 
you, sir: 
The Count Castiglione will not fight, 
Having no cause for quarrel. 

Pol. Now this is true — 
All very true. Thou art my friend, Baldazzar, 
And I have not forgotten it — thou'lt do me 
A piece of service; wilt thou go back and say 
Unto this man, that I, the Earl of Leicester, 
Hold him a villain? — thus much, I prythee, say 
Unto the Count — it is exceeding just 
He should have cause for quarrel. 

Bal. My lord! — my friend! 

Pol. (aside.) 'Tis he — he comes himself! 
(aloud.) Thou reasonest well. 
I know what thou wouldst say — not send the 

message — 
Well! — I will think of it — I will not send it. 
Now prithee,, leave me — hither doth come a 

person 
With whom affairs of a most private nature 
I would adjust. 

Bal. I go — to-morrow we meet. 
Do we not? — at the Vatican? 

Pol. At the Vatican. (Bal. exit.) 

Enter Castiglione. 
Gas. The Earl of Leicester here! 



221 POE'S POEMS. 

Pol. I am the Earl of Leicester, and thou 
seest, 
Dost thou not? that I am here. 
Cas. My lord, some strange. 
Some singular mistake — misunderstanding — 
Hath without doubt arisen, thou hast been 

urged 
Thereby, in heat of anger, to address 
Some words most unaccountable, in writing, 
To me, Castiglione; the bearer being 
Baldazzar, Duke of Surrey. I am aware 
Of nothing which might warrant thee in this 

thing, 
Having given thee no offense. Ha! — am I 

right? 
'Twas a mistake? — undoubtedly — we all 
Do err at times. 

Pol. Draw, villain, and prate no more ! 
Cas. Ha! — draw? — and villain? have at thee 
then at once. 
Proud Earl! (draws.) 

Pol. (drawing.) Thus to the expiatory tomb, 
Untimely sepulcher, I do devote thee 
In the name of Lalage! 
Cas. (letting fall his sword and recoiling to 
the extremity of the stage.) 
Of Lalage! 

Hold off — thy sacred hand — avaunt I say! 
Avaunt — I will not figlit thee — indeed I dare 
not. 
Pol. Thou wilt not fight with me didst say, 
Sir Count? 
Shall I be baffled thus? — now this is well. 
Didst say thou darest not? Ha! 



POE'S POEMS. 222 

Cas. I dare not — dare not — 
Hold off thy hand — with that beloved name 
So fresh upon thy lips I will not fight thee — 
I cannot — dare not. 

Pol. Now by my halidom 
I do believe thee! — coward, 1 do believe thee! 
Cas. Ha ! — coward I — this may not be ! 

(clutches his sword and staggers towards 
Politian, but his purpose is changed 
before reaching him, and he falls upon his 
knee at the feet of the Earl.) 
Alas! my lord, It is — it is — most true. In 

such a cause 
1 am the veriest coward. O pity me! 

Pol. (greatly softened.) Alas! — I do— indeed 
I pity thee. 

Cas. And Lalage 

Pol. Scoundrel! — arise, and die! 
Cas. It needeth not be — thus — thus — O let 
me die 
Thus on my bended knee. It were most fitting 
That in this deep humiliation I perish. 
For in the fight 1 will not raise a hand 
Against thee, Earl of Leicester. Strike thou 

home— (baring his bosom.) 

Here is no let nor hindrance to thy weapon — 
Strike home. I will not fight thee. 

Pol. Now's death and hell! 
Am I not — am I not sorely — grievously 

tempted 
To take thee at thy word? But mark me, sir: 
Think not to fly me thus. Do thou prepare 
For public insult in the streets — before 
The eves of the citizens. I'll follow thee — 



223 POE'S POEMS. 

Like an avenging spirit I'll follow thee, 
Even unto death. Before those whom thou 

lovest — 
Before all Rome, I'll taunt thee, villain, I'll 

taunt thee, — 
Dost hear? with cowardice— thou wilt not fight 

me? 
Thouliest! thou shalt! (exit.) 

Cas. Now this indeed is just! 
Most righteous, and most just, avenging 

Heaven! 



POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH.* 



SONNET— TO SCIENCE. 

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! 

Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. 
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, 

Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? 
How should he love thee? or how deem thee 
wise, 

Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering 
To seek for treasure in the jeweled skies, 

Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? 
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car 

And driven the Hamadryad from the wood 
To seek a shelter in some happier star 

Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood. 
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me 

The summer dream beneath the tamarind 
tree? 

*Private reasons — some of which have reference to 
the sin of plagiarism, and others to the date of Tenny- 
son's first poems — have induced me, after some hesita- 
tion, to republish these, the crude compositions of my 
earliest boyhood. They are printed verbatim— without 
alteration from the original edition — the date of which 
is too remote to be judiciously acknowledged.— E, A. P. 

225 
15 Foe's Poems. 



226 POE'S POEMS. 

AL AARAAF.* 

Part I. 

O! nothing earthly save the ray 

(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty's eye 

As in those gardens where the day 

Springs from the gems of Circassy; — 

Oh ! nothing earthly save the thrill 

Of melody in woodland rill — 

Or (music of the passion-hearted) 

Joy's voice so peacefully departed, 

That, like the murmur in the shell, 

Its echo dwelleth and will dwell — 

O, nothing of the dross of ours — 

Yet all the beauty — all the flowers 

That list our Love, and deck our bowers — 

Adorn yon world afar, afar — 

The wandering star. 

*Twas a sweet time for Nesace — for there 
Her world lay lolling on the golden air, 
Near four bright suns — a temporary rest — 
An oasis in desert of the blest. 
Away — away — 'mid seas of rays that roll 
Empyrean splendor o'er th' unchained soul — . 
The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense) 
Can struggle to its destin'd eminence — 
To distant spheres, from time to time, she 
rode, 

*A star was discovered by Tycho Brahe which ap- 
peared suddenly in the heavens — attained, in a few 
days, a brilliancy surpassing that of Jupiter — then as 
suddenly disappeared, and has never been seen since. 



POE'S POEMS. 227 

And late to ours, the favor'd one of God — 
But, now, the ruler of an anchor'd realm, 
She throws aside the scepter — leaves the helm, 
And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns, 
Leaves in quadruple light her angel limbs. 
Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth, 

Whence sprang the "Idea of Beauty" into 

birth, 
(Falling in wreaths thro' many a startled star, 
Like woman's hair 'mid pearls, until, afar, 
It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt), 
She look'd into Infinity — and knelt. 
Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled — 
Fit emblems of the model of her world — 
Seen but in beauty— not impeding sight 
Of other beauty glittering thro' the light — 
A wreath that twined each starry form around, 
And all the opal'd air in color bound. 

All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed 
Of flowers: of lilies such as rear'd the head 
On the fair Capo Deucato, and sprang 
So eagerly around about to hang 
Upon the flying footsteps of — deep pride — 
Of her * who lov'd a mortal— and so died. 
The Sephalica, budding with young bees, 
Uprear'd its purple stem around her knees: 
And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam d— 
Inmate of the highest stars, where erst it 

sham/d 
All other loveliness: its honeyed dew 
(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew) 
Deliriously sweet, was dropp'd from Heaven, 

^Sappho. 



228 POE'S POEMS. 

And fell on gardens of the tinforgiven 
In Trebizond — and on a sunny flower 
So like its own above, that, to this hour, 
It still remaineth, torturing the bee 
With madness, and unwonted reverie: 
In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf 
And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief 
Disconsolate linger — grief that hangs her head, 
Repenting follies that full long have fled, 
Heaving her white breast to the balmy air, 
Like guilty beauty, chasten'd, and more fair: 
Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light 
She fears to perfume, perfuming the night: 
And Clytia pondering between many a sun, 
While pettish tears adown her petals run: 
And that aspiring flower that sprang on 

Earth— 
And died, ere scarce exalted into birth, 
Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing 
Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king: 
And Valisnerian lotus thither flown 
From struggling with the waters of the Rhone: 
And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante! 
Isola d'oro! — Fior di Levante! 
And the Nelumbo bud that floats forever 
With Indian Cupid down the holy river — 
Fair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given 
To bear the Goddess' song, in odors, up to 
Heaven : 

*• Spirit! that dwellest where, 

In the deep sky, 

The terrible and fair, 

In beauty vie ! 

Beyond the line of blue — 



POE'S POEMS. 229 

The boundary of the star 

Which turneth at the view 

Of thy barrier and thy bar — 

Of the barrier overgone 

By the comets who were cast 

From their pride, and from their throne 

To be drudges till the last — 

To be carriers of fire 

(The red fire of their heart) 

With speed that may not tire 

And with pain that shall not part— 

Who livest — that we know — 

In Eternity — we feel — 

But the shadow of whose brow 

What spirit shall reveal 

Thro' the beings whom thy Nesace, 

Thy messenger hath known 

Have dream 'd for thy Infinity 

A model of their own — 

Thy will is done, O God! 

The star hath ridden high 

Thro' many a tempest, but she rode 

Beneath thy burning eye ; 

And here, in thought, to thee — 

In thought that can alone 

Ascend thy empire and so be 

A partner of thy throne — 

By winged Fantasy, 

My embassy is given, 

Till secrecy shall knowledge be 

In the environs of Heaven." 

She ceas'd — and buried then her burning cheek 
Abash'd, amid the lilies there, to seek 



230 ?OE*S POEMS. 

A shelter from the fervor of His eye ; 

For the stars trembled at the Deity. 

She stirr'd not — breath'd not — for a voice was 

there 
How solemnly pervading the calm air! 
A sound of silence on the startled ear 
Which dreamy poets name "the music of the 

sphere," 
Ours is a world of words: Quiet we call 
*' Silence" — which is the merest word of all. 
All Nature speaks, and ev'n ideal things 
Flap shadowy sounds from visionary wings — 
But ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high 
The eternal voice of God is passing by, 
And the red winds are withering in the sky! 

**What tho' in worlds which sightless cycles 

run, 
Link'd to a little system, and one sun — 
Where all my love is folly and the crowd 
Still think my terrors but the thunder cloud, 
The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean 

wrath — 
(Ah ! will they cross me in my angrier path ?) 
What tho' in worlds which own a single sun 
The sands of Time grow dimmer as they run, 
Yet thine is my resplendency, so given 
To bear my secrets thro' the upper Heaven. 
Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly. 
With all thy train, athwart the moony sky — 
Apart — like fire-flies in Sicilian night. 
And wing to other worlds another light! 
Divulge the secrets of thy embassy 
To the proud orbs that twinkle— and so be 



POE'S POEMS. 231 

To ev'ry heart a barrier and a ban 
Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!" 
Up rose the maiden in the yellow night, 
The single-mooned eve!— on Earth we plight 
Our faith to one love — and one moon adore — 
The birth-place of young Beauty had no more. 
As sprang that yellow star from dawny hours 
Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers, 
And bent o'er sheeny mountain and dim plain 
Her way — but left not yet her Therassean 
reign. 



Part II. 



High on a mountain of enamel'd head — 
Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed 
Of giant pasturage lying at his ease, 
Raising his heavy eyelids, starts and sees 
With many a mutter'd '*hope to be forgiven" 
What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven — 
Of rosy head, that towering far away 
Into the sunlit either, caught the ray 
Of sunken suns at eve — at noon of night, 
While the moon danc'd with the fair stranger 

light- 
Uprear'd upon such height arose a pile 
Of gorgeous columns on th' imburthen'd air. 
Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile 
Far down upon the wave that sparkled there, 
And nursled the young mountain in its lair. 
Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall 
Thro' the ebon air, besilvering the pall 
Of their own dissolution, while they die — 



232 POE'S POEMS. 

Adorning then the dwellings of the sky. 

A dome, by linked light from Heaven let 

down, 
Sat gently on these columns as a crown — 
A window of one circular diamond, there, 
Look'd out above into the purple air, 
And rays from God shot down that meteor 

chain 
And hallow'd all the beauty twice again, 
Save when, between th' Empyrean and that 

ring, 
Some eager spirit flapp'd his dusky wing. 
But on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen 
The dimness of this world; that grayish green 
That Nature loves the best for Beauty's grave 
Lurk'd in each cornice, round each archi- 
trave — 
And every sculptur'd cherub thereabout 
That from his marble dwelling peered out, 
Seem'd earthly in the shadow of his niche — 
Achaian statues in a world so rich? 
Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis, 
From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss 
Of beautiful Gomorrah ! O, the wave 
Is now upon thee — but too late to save! 

Sound loves to revel in a summer night; 
Witness the murmur of the gray twilight 
That stole upon the ear, in Eyraco, 
Of many a wild star gazer long ago 
That stealeth ever on the ear of him 
Who, musing, gazeth on the distance dim, 
And sees the darkness coming as a cloth — 



FOE'S POEMS. 233 

ts not its form — its voice — most palpable and 
loud? 

But what is this? — it cometh — and it brings 
A music with it — 'tis the rush of wings — 
A pause — and then a sweeping, falling strain 
And Nesace is in her halls again. 
From the wild energy of wanton haste 
' Her cheeks were flushing, and her lips apart; 
And zone that clung around her gentle waist 

Had burst beneath the heaving of her heart. 
Within the center of that hall to breathe 
She paus'd and panted, Zanthe! all beneath. 
The fairy light that kiss'd her golden hair 
And long'd to rest, yet could but sparkle there! 

Young flowers were whispering in melody 
To happy flowers that night — and tree to tree; 
Fountains were gushing music as they fell 
In many a star-lit grove, or moon-lit dell ; 
Yet silence came upon material things — 
Fair flowers, bright waterfalls and angel 

wings — 
And sound alone that from the spirit sprang 
Bore burthen to the charm the maiden sang: 

** 'Neath blue-bell or streamer — 
• Or tufted wild spray 
That keeps, from the dreamer, 

The moonbeam away — 
Bright beings! that ponder, 

With half closing-eyes, 
On the stars which your wonder 

Hath drawn from the skies, 
Till they glance thro* the shade, and 

Come down to your brow 

6 Poe'e Poems. 



234 POE'S POEMS 

Like — eyes of the maiden 

Who calls on you now. 
Arise ! from your dreaming 

In violet bowers. 
To duty beseeming 

These star-litten hours — 

*'And shake from your tresses 

Encumber 'd with dew 
The breath of those kisses 

That cumber them too 
(O! how, without you, Love! 

Could angels be blest?) — 
Those kisses of true love 

That lull'dye to rest! 
Up! shake from your wing 

Each hindering thing: 
The dew of the night — 

It would weigh down your flight; 
And true love caresses — 

Oh! leave them apart: 
They are light on the tresses, 

But lead on the heart. 

•'Ligeia! Ligeia! 

My beautiful one! 
Whose harshest idea 

Will to melody run, 
O! is it thy will 

On the breezes to toss? 
Or, capriciously still, 

Like the lone Albatross, 
Incumbent on night 

(As she on the air) 



POE'S POEMS. 2S5 

To keep watch with delight 
On the harmony there? 

•'Ligeia! wherever 

Thy image may be, 
No magic shall sever 

Thy music from thee. 
Thou hast bound many eyes 

In a dreamy sleep — 
But the strains still arise 

Which thy vigilance keep— 
The sound of the rain 

Which leaps down to the flower, 
And dances again 

In the rhythm of the shower — 
The murmur that springs 

From the growing of grass 
Are the music of things — 

But are model'd, alas! — 
Away, then, my dearest, 

O ! hie thee away 
To springs that lie clearest 

Beneath the moon-ray — 
To lone lake that smiles, 

In its dream of deep rest. 
At the many star-isles 

That enjeweled its breast — 
Where the wild flowers, creeping 

Have mingled their shade, 
On its margin is sleeping 

Full many a maid — 
Sorae have left the cool glade, and 

Have slept with the bee — 
Arouse them, my maiden, 



'dm POE'S POEMS. 

On moorland and lea — 
Go! breathe on their slumber, 

All softly in ear, 
The musical number 

They slumber'd to hear — 
For what can awaken 

An angel so soon 
Whose sleep hath been taken 

Beneath the cold moon 
As the spell which no slumber 

Of witchery may test, 
The rhythmical number 

Which luU'd him to rest?" 

Spirits in wings, and angels to the view, 
A thousand seraphs burst th' Empyrean thro*, 
Young dreams still hovering on their drowsy- 
flight. 
Seraphs in all but "Knowledge," the keen 

light 
That fell, refracted, thro' thy bounds, afar, 
O Death! from eye of God upon that star: 
Sweet was that error — sweeter still that 

death — 
Sweet was that error— e'en with us the breath 
Of Science dims the mirror of our joy — 
To them 'twere the Simoon, and would 

destroy — 
For what (to them) availeth it to know 
That Truth is Falsehood— or that Bliss is Woe? 
Sweet was their death — with them to die was 

rife 
With the last ecstasy of satiate life — 
Beyond that death no immortality — 



POE'S POEMS. 23T 

But sleep that pondereth and is not "to be" — 
And there — oh! may my weary spirit dwell — 
Apart from Heaven's Eternity — and yet how 

far from Hell ! 
What guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim, 
Heard not the stirring summons of that hymn? 
But two: they fell — for Heaven no grace 

imparts 
To those who hear not for their beating hearts. 
A maiden-angel and her seraph-lover — 
O! where (and ye may seek the wide skies 

over) 
Was Love, the blind, near sober Duty known? 
Unguided Love hath fallen — 'mid *' tears of 

perfect moan." 

He was a goodly spirit — he who fell ; 
A wanderer by mossy-mantled well — 
A gazer on the lights that shine above — 
A dreamer in the moonbeam by his love: 
What wonder? for each star is eye-like there, 
And looks so sweetly down on Beauty's hair; 
And they, and ev'ry mossy spring were holy 
To his love-haunted heart and melancholy. 
The night had found (to him a night of woe) 
Upon a mountain crag, young Angelo — 
Beetling it bends athwart the solemn sky, 
And scowls on starry worlds that down be- 
neath it lie. 
Here sate he with his love — his dark eye bent 
With eagle gaze along the firmament: 
Now turned it upon her — but ever then 
It trembled to the orb of Earth again. 



238 POE'S POEMS. 

*' Ian the, dearest, see! how dim that ray! 
How lovely 'tis to look so far away! 
She seemed not thus upon that autumn eve 
I left her gorgeous halls — nor mourned to 

leave. 
That eve — that eve — •! should remember well — 
The sun-ray dropped, in Lemnos, with a spell 
On th' Arabesque carving of a gilded hall 
Wherein I sate, and on the draperied wall — 
And on my eyelids — O the heavy light! 
How drowsily it weighed them into night! 
On flowers, before, and mist, and love they 

ran 
With Persian Saadi in his Gulistan: 
But O that light!— I slumber'd— Death, the 

while. 
Stole o'er my senses in that lovely isle 
So softly that no single silken hair 
Awoke that slept — or knew that he was there. 

"The last spot of Earth's orb I trod upon 
Was a proud temple call'd the Parthenon. 
More beauty clung around her column'd wall 
Than ev'n thy glowing bosoms beats withal. 
And when old Time my wing did disenthral — 
Thence sprang I — as the eagle from his tower, 
And years I left behind me in an hour. 
What time upon her airy bounds I hung, 
One half the garden of her globe was flung. 
Unrolling as a chart unto my view— 
Tenantless cities of the desert too! 
lanthe, beauty crowded on me then, 
And half I wished to be again of men." 
'*My Angelo! and why of them to be? 



POE'S POEMS. 239 

A brighter dwelling-place is here for thee, 
And greener fields than in yon world above, 
And woman's loveliness — and passionate love.** 

"But, list, lanthe! when the air so soft 
Fail'd, as my pennon'd spirit leapt aloft, 
Perhaps my brain grew dizzy — but the world 
I left so late was into chaos hurl'd — 
Sprang from her station, on the winds apart, 
And roll'd, a flame, the fiery Heaven athwart. 
Methought, my sweet one, then I ceased to 

soar 
And fell— not so swiftly as I rose before. 
But with a downward, tremulous motion thro* 
Light, brazen rays, this golden star unto! 
Nor long the measure of my falling hours, 
For nearest of all stars was thine to ours — _ 
Dread star! that came, amid a night of mirth 
A red Dsedalion on the timid Earth. 

•*We came— and to thy Earth— but not to us 
Be given our lady's bidding to discuss: 
We came, my love; around, above, below, 
Gay fire-fly of the night we come and go. 
Nor ask a reason save the angel-nod 
She grants to us, as granted by her God- 
But, Angelo, than thine gray Time unfurl'd 
Never his fairy wing o'er fairer world! 
Dim was its little disk and angel eyes 
Alone could see the phantom in the skies. 
When first Al Aaraaf knew her course to be 
Headlong thitherward o'er the starry sea— 
But when its glory swell'd upon the sky, 
As glowing beauty's bust beneath man's eye. 



240 POE'S POEMS. 

We paused before the heritage of men, 
And thy star trembled — as doth Beauty then!" 
Thus, in discourse, the lovers whiled away 
The night that waned and waned and brought 

no day, 
They fell : for Heaven to them no hope im- 
parts 
Who hear not for the beating of their hearts. 

TO THE RIVER . 



Fair river! in thy bright, clear flow 
Of crystal, wandering water, 

Thou art an emblem of the glow 

Of beauty — the unhidden heart— 
The playful maziness of art 

In old Alberto's daughter; 

But when within thy wave she looks — 

Which glistens then, and trembles — 
Why, then, the prettiest of books 

Her worshiper resembles; 
For in his heart, as in thy stream. 

Her image deeply lies — 
His heart which trembles at the beam 

Of her soul-searching eyes. 

TAMERLANE. 

Kind solace in a dying hour! 

Such, father, is not (now) my theme — 

I will not madly deem that power 

Of Earth may shrive me of the sin 
Unearthly pride hath revel'd in — 



POE'S POEMS. 241 

I have no time to dote or dream: 

You call it hope — that fire of fire ! 

It is but agony of desire : 

If I can hope— Oh, God ! I can- 
Its fount is holier — more divine — 

I would not call thee fool, old man, 
But such is not a gift of thine. 

Know thou the secret of a spirit 

Bow'd from its wild pride into shame. 

O yearning heart! I did inherit 

Thy withering portion with the fame, 

The searing glory which hath shone 

Amid the jewels of my throne, 

Halo of Hell! and with a pain 

Not Hell shall make me fear again — 

craving heart, for the lost flowers 
And sunshine of my summer hours! 
The undying voice of that dead time, 
With its interminable chime, 
Rings, in the spirit of a spell, 

Upon thy emptiness — a knell. 

1 have Hot always been as now : 
The fever'd diadem on my brow 

I claim'd and won usurpingly — 
Hath not the same fierce heirdom given 
Rome to Caesar — this to me? 
The heritage of a kingly mind, 
And a proud spirit which hath striven 
Triumphantly with human kind. 

On mountain soil I first drew life : 
The mists of the Taglay have shed 
Nightly the dews upon my head, 



242 POE'S POEMS. 

And, I believe, the winged strife 
And tumult of the headlong air 
Have nestled in my very hair. 

So late from Heaven — that dew — it fell 

('Mid dreams of an unholy night) 
Upon me with the touch of Hell, 

While the red flashing of the light 
From clouds that hung like banners, o'er, 

Appeared to my half closing eye 

The pageantry of monarchy, 
And the deep trumpet thunder's roar 
Came hurriedly upon me, telling 

Of human battle, where my voice, 
My own voice, silly child! — was swelling 

(O ! how my spirit would rejoice, 
And leap within me at the cry) 
The battle-cry of Victory! 

The rain came down upon my head 
Unshelter'd — and the heavy wind 
Rendered me mad and deaf and blind. 

It was but man, I thought, who shed 
Laurels upon me : and the rush — 

The torrent of the chilly air 

Gurgled within my ear the crush 

Of empires — with the captive's prayer— 

The hum of suitors — and the tone 

Of flattery 'round a sovereign's throne. 

My passions, from that hapless hour, 

Usurped a tyranny which men 
Have deem'd, since I have reached to power, 
My innate nature — be it so : 



POE'S POEMS. 243 

But, father, there liv'd one who, then, 
Then — in my boyhood — when their fire 

Burn'd with a still intenser glow 
(For passion must, with youth, expire) 
E'en then who knew this iron heart 
In woman's weakness had a part. 

I have no words — alas — to tell 
The loveliness of loving well ! 
Nor would I now attempt to trace 
The more than beauty of a face 
Whose lineaments, upon my mind, ^ 

Are shadows on th* unstable wind: 

Thus I remember having dwelt 

Some page of early lore upon, 
With loitering eye, till I have felt 
The letters— with their meaning— melt 

To fantasies — with none. 

O, she was worthy of all love! 

Love — as in infancy was mine — 
'Twas such as angel minds above 

Might envy ; her young heart the shrine 
On which my every hope and thought 

Were incense— then a goodly gift. 
For they were childish and upright — 
Pure as her young example taught : 

Why did I leave it, and, adrift, 
Trust to the fire within, for light? 

We grew an age — and love — together — 
Roaming the forest, and the wild ; 

My breast her shield in wintry weather— 
And, when the friendly sunshine smil'd 



244 POE'S POEMS. 

And she would mark the opening skies, 
I sav/ no Heaven — but in her eyes. 
Young Love's first lesson is the heart: 

For 'mid that sunshine, and those smiles, 
When, from our little cares apart, 

And laughing at her girlish v^riles, 
I'd throw me on her throbbing breast, 

And pour my spirit out in tears — 
There was no need to speak the rest — 

No need to quiet any fears 
Of her — who asked no reason why. 
But turned on me her quiet eye! 

Yet more than worthy of the love 
My spirit struggled with, and strove, 
When, on the mountain peak alone, 
Ambition lent it a new tone — 
I had no being — but in thee: 

The world, and all it did contain 
In the earth — the air — the sea — 

Its joy — its little lot of pain 
That was new pleasure the ideal, 

Dim, vanities of dreams by night — 
And dimmer nothings which were real — 

(Shadows — and a more shadowy light!) 
Parted upon their misty wings. 
And, so, confusedly, became 
Thine image and — a name — a name! 
Two separate — yet most intimate things. 

I was ambitious — have you known 

The passion, father? You have not: 
A cottager, I mark'd a throne 
Of half the world as all my own, 



POE'S POEMS. 245 

And murmur'd at such lowly lot — 
But, just like any other dream, 

Upon the vapor of the dew 
My own had past, did not the beam 

Of beauty which did while it thro* 
The minute— the hour— the day— oppress 
My mind with double loveliness 
We walk'd together on the crown 
Of a high mountain which look'd down 
Afar from its proud natural towers 
Of rock and forest, on the hills— 
The dwindled hills! begirt with bowers 
And shouting with a thousand rills. 

I spoke to her of power and pride, 

But mystically— in such guise 
That she might deem it nought beside 

The moment's converse; in her eyes 
I read, perhaps too carelessly — 

A mingled feeling with my own — 
The flush on her bright cheek, to me 

Seem'd to become a queenly throne 
Too well that I should let it be 

Light in the wilderness alone. 

I wrapp'd myself in grandeur then 

And donn'd a visionary crown — 
Yet it was not that Fantasy 

Had thrown her mantle over me — 
But that, among the rabble — men, 

Lion ambition is chain'd down — 
And crouches to a keeper's hand — 

Not so in Jeserts w^here the grand — 



246 POE'S POEMS. 

The wild — the terrible conspire 
With their own breath to fan his fire. 

Look 'round thee now on Samarcand! — 

Is she not queen of Earth? her pride 
Above all cities? in her hand 

Their destinies? in all beside 
Of glory which the world hath known 

Stands she not nobly and alone? 
Falling — her veriest stepping-stone 

Shall form the pedestal of a throne — 
And who her sovereign? Timour — he 
Whom the astonished people saw 
Striding o'er empires haughtily 

A diadem 'd outlaw! 

O, human love! thou spirit given, 
On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven! 
Which fall'st into the soul like rain 
Upon the Siroc-wither'd plain, 
And, falling in thy power to bless, 
But leav'st the heart a wilderness! 
Idea! which bindest life around 
With music of so strange a sound 
And beauty of so wild a birth — 
Farewell! for I have won the Earth. 

When Hope, the eagle that tower'd, could see 

No cliff beyond him in the sky. 
His pinions were bent droopingly — 

And homeward turn'd his soften 'd eye. 
'Twas smnset: when the sun will part 
There comes a suUenness of heart 
To him who still would look upon 



POE'S POEMS. 247 

The glory of the summer sun. 

That soul will hate the ev'ning mist 

So often lovely, and will list 

To the sound of the coming darkness (known 

To those whose spirits hearken) as one 
Who, in a dream of night, would fly 
But cannot from a danger nigh. 

What tho' the moon— the white moon 
Shed all the splendor of her noon, 
Her smile is chilly— and her beam. 
In that time of dreariness, will seem 
(So like you gather in your breath) 
A portrait taken after death. 
And boyhood is a summer sun 
Whose waning is the dreariest one— 
For all we live to know is known 
And all we seek to keep hath flown — 
Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall 
With the noon-day beauty— which is all. 

I reach'd my home— my home no more— 
For all had flown who made it so. 
I pass'd from out its mossy door. 
And, tho' my tread was soft and low, 
A voice came from the threshold stone 
Of one whom I had earlier known— 

O, I defy thee, Hell, to show 
On beds of fire that burn below, 

An humbler heart— a deeper woe. 

Father, I firmly do believe— 

I know— for Death who comes for me 
From regions of the blest afar, 



248 POE'S POEMS. 

Where there is nothing to deceive, 
Hath left his iron gate ajar, 

And rays of truth you cannot see 

Are flashing thro' Eternity — 
I do believe that Eblis hath 
A snare in every human path — 
Else how, when in the holy grove 
I wandered, of the idol, Love. 
Who daily scents his snowy wings 
With incense of burnt offerings 
From the most unpolluted things, 
Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven 
Above with trellis'd rays from Heaven 
No mote may shun — no tiniest fly — > 
The light'ning of his eagle eye — 
How was it that Ambition crept. 

Unseen, amid the revels there. 
Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt 

In the tangles of Love's very hair? 



TO 



The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see 

The wantonest singing birds, 
Are lips — and all thy melody 

Of lip-begotten words — 

Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrined 

Then desolately fall, 
God! on my funereal mind 

Like starlight on a pall — 

Thy heart — thy heart! — I wake and sigh, 
And sleep to dream till day 



POE'S POEMS. 249 

Of the truth that gold can never buy — 
Of the baubles that it may. 

A DREAM. 

In visions of the dark night 

I have dreamed of joy departed — 

But a waking dream of life and light 
Hath left me broken-hearted. 

Ah! what is not a dream by day 

To him whose eyes are cast 
On things around him with a ray 

Turned back upon the past? 

That holy dream — that holy dream, 
While all the world were chiding, 

Hath cheered me as a lovely beam 
A lonely spirit guiding. 

What though that light, thro* storm and night, 

So trembled from afar — 
What could there be more purely bright 

In Truth's day-star? 

ROMANCE. 

Romance, who loves to nod and sing, 
With drowsy head and folded wing. 
Among the green leaves as they shake 
Far down within some shadowy lake, 
To me a painted paroquet 
Hath been — a most familiar bird — 
Taught me my alphabet to say — 



250 POE'S POEP^S. 

To lisp my very earliest word, 
While to the wild wood I did lie 
A child — with a most knowing eye. 

Of late, eternal Condor years 
So shake the very Heaven on high 
With tumult as they thunder by, 
I have no time for idle cares 
Through gazing on the unquiet sky. 
And when an hour with calmer wings 
Its down upon m)'- spirit flings — 
That little time with lyre and rhyme 
To while away — forbidden things! 
My heart would feel to be a crime 
Unless it trembled with the strings. 

FAIRYLAND. 

Dim vales — and shadowy floods — 
And cloudy-looking woods. 
Whose forms we can't discover 
For the tears that drip all over; 
Huge moons there wax and wane — 
Again — again — again — 
Every moment of the night 
Forever changing places. 
And they put out the star-light 
With the breath from their pale faces. 
About twelve by the moon-dial 
One more filmy than the rest 
(A kind which, upon trial. 
They have found to be the best) 
Comes down— still down — and down 
With its center on the crown 



POE'S POEMS. 25J 

Of a mountain's eminence. 
While its wide circumference 
In easy drapery falls 
Over hamlets, over halls, 
Wherever they may be 
O'er the strange woods — o'er the sea- 
Over spirits on the wing — 
Over every drowsy thing — 
And buries them up quite 
In a labyrinth of light — 
And then, how deep ! — O, deep 
Is the passion of their sleep. 
In the morning they arise, 
And their moony covering 
Is soaring in the skies. 
With the tempests as they toss 

Like almost any thing — 

Or a yellow Albatross. 
They use that moon no more 
For the same end as before 
Videlicet a tent — 
Which I think extravagant: 
Its atomies, however, 
Into a shower dissever, 
Of which those butterflies 
Of Earth, v/ho seek the skies. 
And so come down again 
(Never-contented things!) 
•Have brought a specimen 
Upon their quivering wings. 



252 POE'S POEMS. 
THE LAKE. To 



In spring of youth it was my lot 

To haunt of the wide world a spot 

The which I could not love the less — 

So lovely was the loneliness 

Of a wild lake, with black rock bound, 

And the tall pines that towered around, 

But when the Night had thrown her pall 

Upon that spot, as upon all, 

And the mystic wind went by 

Murmuring in melody — 

Then — ah, then, I would awake 

To the terror of a lone lake. 

Yet the terror was not fright, 

But a tremulous delight — 

A feeling not the jeweled mine 

Could teach or bribe me to define — 

Nor love — although the Love were thine. 

Death was in that poisonous wave. 

And in its gulf a fitting grave 

For him who thence could solace bring 

To his lone imagining 

Whose solitary soul could make 

An Eden of that dim lake. 

SONG. 

t saw thee on thy bridal day 

When a burning blush came o'er thee, 
Through happiness around thee lay, 

The world all love before thee: 



POE'S POEMS. 253 

And thine eye a kindling light 

(Whatever it might be) 
Was all on Earth my aching sight 

Ot Loveliness could see. 

That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame- 
As such it well may pass— 

Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame 
In the breast of him, alas! 

Who saw thee on that bridal day, ^ 

When that deep blush would come o er tnee, 

Though happiness around thee lay. 
The world all love before thee. 

TO M. L. S. , 

Of all who hail thy presence as the morning-- 
Of all to whom thine absence is the night— 
The blotting utterly from out high neaven 
The sacred sun— of all who, weeping, bless thee 
Hourly for hope— for life— ah! above all. 
For the resurrection of deep-buried faitti, 
In Truth— in Virtue— in Humanity— 
Of all who, on Despair's unhallowed bed 
Lvin^ down to die, have suddenly arisen 
At thy soft-murmured words, "Let there be 

light!" ^ ,.,. , 

At the soft-murmured words that were fulnUeO 
In the seraphic glancing of thme eyes— 
Of all who owe thee most— whose gratiuide 
Nearest resembles worship— oh remember 
The truest— the most fervently devoted, 



254 POE'S POEMS. 

And think that these weak lines are written by 

him — 
By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think 
His spirit is communing with an angel's. 

SPIRIT OF THE DEAD. 

Thy soul shall find itself alone 

'Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone— 

Not one, of all the crowd, to pry 

Into thine hour of secrecy. 

Be silent in thy solitude 

Which is not loneliness — for then 
The spirits of the dead who stood 

In life before thee are again 
In death around thee — and their will 
Shall overshadow thee, be still, 

The night— tho' clear — shall frown — 
And the stars shall not look down 
From their high thrones in the Heaven, 
With light like Hope to mortals given — 
But their red orbs, without beam, 
To thy weariness shall seem 
As a burning and a fever 
Which would cling to thee forever. 

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish — 
Now are visions ne'er to vanish — 
From thy spirit shall they pass 
No more — like dew-drops from the grass. 

The breeze — the breath of God — is stlil — 
And the mist upon the hill 



POE'S POEMS. ^ 

Sahdowy— shadowy— yet unbroken, 
Is a symbol and a token — 
How it hangs upon the trees, 
A mystery of mysteries! 

TO HELEN. 

Helen, thy beauty is to me 

Like those Nicean barks of yore. 

That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, 
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore 
To his own native shore. 

On desperate seas long wont to roam. 
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face. 

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home 
To the glory that was Greece 

And the grandeur that was Rome. 

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche 
How statue-like I see thee stand! 
The agate lamp within thy hand. 

Ah! Pysche, from the regions which 
Are Holy Land! 

ALONE. 

From childhood's hour I have not been 
As others were— I have not seen 
As others saw— I could not bring 
My passions from a common spring. 
From the same source I have not taken 
My sorrow; I could not awaken 
My heart to joy at the same tone; 
And all I lov'd, I lov'd alone. 



256 POE'S POEMS. 

Then — in my childhood — in the dawn 
Of a most stormy life was drawn — 
From ev'ry depth of good and ill 
The mystery which binds me still: 
From the torrent, or the fountain, 
From the red cliff of the mountain, 
From the sun that 'round me roU'd 
In its autumn tint of gold — 
From the lightning in the sky 
As it pass'd me flying by — 
From the thunder and the storm, 
And the cloud that took the form 
(When the rest of Heaven was blue) 
Of a demon in my view. 

THE END, 



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